


Charcoal and Chalk

by MonoclePony



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Artist Marco, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humour, Jean POV, M/M, Magical Realism, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Paris AU, Urban Fantasy, bohemian au, broke artists au, grit - Freeform, writer Jean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2018-06-04 12:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6659020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonoclePony/pseuds/MonoclePony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Kirschtein has been in Paris for six months. He's broke, he's jobless and he has chronic writer's block. Living in a hostel with a wannabe filmmaker, two struggling actors and a host of other creatives looking to make their way, Jean tries and fails to make his ends meet and his words coherent until he meets a chalk street artist who teaches him many important lessons about finding beauty in the mundane and letting go of the person he's trying to forget. </p>
<p>A shameless Bohemian AU for theprophetlemonade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theprophetlemonade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theprophetlemonade/gifts).



> I KNOW I SHOULD BE WORKING ON SFS BUT SHUSH
> 
> This is for Lucy, because she deserves everything wonderful on her birthday! She's a great friend, a fantastic writer and I couldn't send her a birthday card so this will have to do :D 
> 
> Please note that this is not completed- I ran out of time due to writing an original piece for a short story award it is now entered in *squee* along with work commitments. I'm sorry Lucy, but I swear to you, you will get the rest in due course. Cus hey, it's us, multi chapter fics are definitely a thing ;D 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy what I have, and I hope the vibe comes across at least. It may have a lil more editing done once it's finished in its entirety, but this is the first draft(ish), so feedback from anyone reading would be wonderful!
> 
> Enjoyyyyy, and happy birthday my little noodley friend <3

For the majority of his twenty years on the planet, Jean Kirschtein was plagued by blank pages. Blank cards from birthdays where money from his father spoke more than wishes, blank report cards from school, blank letters from would-be crushes still smouldering in his wastepaper basket… he had his fair share of it all. After each incident his mother would sigh and give him that look that all parents perfected just to guilt trip their offspring, and tell him that he just needed to try a little harder. Jean knew better than that. He just seemed to attract the emptiness, like a black hole in the midst of a great universe. Sometimes he thought he could feel it, swirling around in the middle of his stomach threatening to engulf anything that got too close.

That was part of the reason why he left his snug little town and ended up here, in the gall bladder of the earth. Hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers; people who wanted to run didn’t really have the luxury of choosing when and where they would run to, and Jean had got on the first flight out of his home town without looking back. He hadn’t even been sure where he was going, but it gained a stamp on his otherwise blank passport and Jean took it as a sign of things to come. He needed inspiration, and his wholesome neighbourhood with white picket fences and lustrous lawns wasn’t the place he could find it. He was sick of being blank. He wanted to write and be written on in return.

Perhaps he had gone into this whole thing a little romantically.

Here he was, sat in a crumbling youth hostel in the backwaters of October Paris, with just another blank page in front of him- and an equally blank bank account.

He arched back on the desk chair and let out a low groan as the lower parts of his spine clicked into place. He’d been staring out of the grimy window for the better part of an hour now. How time flew when he was having fun. He looked back to the desk and promptly cringed at the one-word page curled onto his mocking typewriter. He’d bought it cheap in one of the secondhand shops nearby in an attempt to coax the words so firmly locked behind a door. So far, it had done nothing more than jiggle the doorknob, and Jean was beginning to despair. He couldn’t exactly call himself a writer if he didn’t _write_ anything- it sort of defeated the object. And he knew something was _there_ , lurking around the corner, if only he could run a little bit faster…

“Honey, I’m home!”

Jean deflated in his chair. His peace was well and truly shattered the minute the door burst open and Connie Springer trotted in, an entire wardrobe floating in with him. It took three attempts to get all of the skirts through the narrow doorway, and a few choice words from Connie, but soon there was a sea of multi-coloured netting and fabric strewn about the floor. Jean peered at it, but decided not to ask. Connie was what everyone called a free spirit, though his kind were usually restricted to the magic and glitter of children’s films. He wanted to break onto the artsy film scene, and would stop at nothing to do it- even if it did mean he had to carry his potential costumes around with him like a travelling circus.

Connie paused in shuffling the tide of colour to one side and offered Jean a toothy grin. Jean gave a scowl back. “Can you wait two more minutes?” he asked, gesturing to his typewriter.

“No can do boy scout, you’ve had the desk for three hours now.” Connie continued to shuffle around the fabrics, wincing every time he stepped on a hem. “Shift your ass, I have twenty skirts to sew for the cabaret dancers down the hall before their show tonight.”

“And how the hell are you gonna do all that?”

Connie hesitated. “Team effort?” he tried.

Jean turned back to the typewriter, sour-faced. “Find another desk.”

“We don’t have another desk.”

“We definitely do.” Jean squinted at the page, willed some words to rise to the surface like ink blots, and was grieved to realise it wasn’t going to happen. “Five more minutes,” he grumbled, “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.”

Too late, Connie got in range of the typewriter. Jean didn’t have time to fling his arms over the embarrassingly empty page, and when he peeked over his shoulder, Connie didn’t look impressed. “That’s, uh, some breakthrough,” he said.

Jean scowled, but it broke halfway through when Connie sighed and pouted. You couldn’t show weakness to Connie Springer- you let your guard slip and he would wiggle in and get anything he wanted. Jean looked back to his typewriter, locking his hands behind his head and pursing his lips. The deadline for the anthology submission was in a week. He was fucked. “What happened to the other desk?” he asked in a bid to change the subject.

The corners of Connie’s mouth twisted into a sheepish grin. “Remember the fire we made on the roof garden?”

Jean deflated. “Oh.” He’d liked that desk. Sure, it creaked and one leg was shorter than the others, but it served a greater purpose.

“Yeah. So c’mon, shift. No use tearing your hair out over the soul of Shakespeare when there are cabaret dancers awaiting clothes.”

Jean wrinkled his nose. “Now there’s a saying that won’t be catching on.”

“Shift.”

He gave up. Even if he wanted to work, there was no way in hell he would manage it if he had Connie Springer begging for help every five minutes. He picked up the typewriter, crossed the room to draw back the curtain eclipsing his bed from view and unceremoniously dumped it there, amid noises of delight and thanks from Connie. He wasn’t a _bad_ roommate, all things considered- Jean had had far, far worse. Connie was a laugh. Connie was the type you could confide your darkest secrets and know they would never resurface. Connie was in a somewhat tempestuous relationship with his filmmaking, so that ruled out the chance of a girlfriend coming in and making everything awkward. In a sense, Connie was a very good roommate. Jean wondered what that made _him._

“Thank you thank you thank you,” Connie chanted as he dove into the chair and pulled the first skirt out of the pile with a huff. “You’re a lifesaver, the girls will be so pleased!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jean said, snatching up a cracked leather messenger bag and slinging it over his shoulder. He didn’t care much for female gratitude- not at the moment, anyway. “Who’s back?”

“Who knows. I’ve been out all day.” Connie replied. He wasted no time; the first costume was strewn across the desk like a gutted bird of paradise, feathers and glitter and mesh everywhere, and Connie was cutting the necessary lengths of thread with his teeth. Where he’d been hiding the cotton reel was Jean’s guess.

All he did was give Connie a grunt over his shoulder as he left. He’d been rudely yanked out of his headspace, and he did _not_ appreciate it. There had to be somewhere in the building he could find a dark corner to curl up in with his notebook.

Stepping out of his allotted room was as risky as stepping into a nuclear wasteland. Once upon a time, it might have been the hostel of choice (though Jean highly doubted it) amongst the young and beautiful of travellers and hitchhikers around Paris, but now the place was an orphanage for the wild, the stupid and the broke. Jean was brought to the place by a friend who was long gone now, and he was sure that the Sawney & Bean Hostel-cum-Apartment Complex wasn’t a place you stayed at- you simply turned up and never checked out. Like the Hotel California- but with more moths and less expensive wine.

The walls were painted a burnt red to mimic the illusion of warmth, though the paint was cracked and peeling in places, and the carpets had been pulled up long ago. This clearly hadn’t crossed the minds of the three students passed out in the middle of the hallway, however, and Jean was forced to lunge over one and narrowly avoided treading on the other’s head. One of them was snoring. The other was using an empty bottle of vodka as a pillow. The third unfortunate sleeper was a girl, dainty and elfin in appearance, and she had at least tried to prop herself out of harm’s way. Her back was shoved up against the wall- in a bid to keep herself awake, no doubt- and her head lolled lifelessly onto her chest. Jean paused. From the angle she was at, it was hard to tell if she was breathing or not. Then she let out a very un-pixie like snort, and the concern broke like a spell. Jean left them to it.

He was halfway down the hallway, scouting out the best corner to scuttle into and hide for a while, when an arm shot out of the nearest door and hooked around his collar. Jean let out a squawk as he was yanked backwards, and stumbled into the doorframe he was being dragged into. Pain bloomed on his hip as it gave the door a particularly hard whack going through. He shouted out a, “FUCK”, as he was pulled in deeper, body momentarily seizing up with panic...

His expression promptly soured as he came face to face with a pair of bright, seashell eyes. “Eren, you nearly gave me a fucking heart attack, you prick,” he hissed.

The eyes blinked. “Here’s hoping dickwad, might actually scare a likeable personality into you.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you harder.”

Jean rolled his eyes and shouldered his way out of Eren’s grip. The grin he got didn’t sweeten his mood. Eren Jaeger was the kind of person who wanted everyone to be his friend, whether they wanted to or not. Jean was one such victim, but he hated to admit that he was warming to the little idiot. He sank onto the bed opposite the door and slouched expectantly. Thankfully there was no human-shaped lump this time around. Eren and Armin were the kind of roommates who couldn’t say no to company, and usually always had some stranger sleeping in a bed or on their floor; Jean was surprised that they hadn’t invited in the three hallway snoozers. It was possibly due to the fact that today Armin was choosing to sport a sunflower print sundress that rose past their knees when they stretched. Not all strangers were the accepting kind. Jean could definitely get behind dresses as a form of unisex clothing, but he would never outwardly admit it. He let his gaze linger on Armin’s legs before he spoke.

“What are you two doing cooped up in here? I thought you would be out crunching the cobbles looking for work.”

Eren groaned. “We _did_ ,” he said, “but no one wants me. I slipped some pictures under a few doors, but nothing.” He raked a hair through his air and wrinkled his nose. “Apparently the fact that I’m happy to play both male and female roles is not an asset to anyone right now.”

“Would’ve been for Shakespeare,” Armin piped up. Their voice was a honeyed change from the spike of Eren’s bitterness.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Eren huffed and collapsed in a heap next to his friend. Jean wasn’t sure where they came from, or if they even came from the same place. Germany-America was Eren’s vague answer, but the enigmatic smile Armin gave whenever Eren talked about it suggested that the story went far further than that. “Whatever,” Eren grumbled, “short story is that I fucking suck and no one wants to hire me.”

“You need to learn French,” Armin said absent-mindedly. They were flicking through an old hardback with a muted expression as Eren complained, and Jean wondered if this was a usual occurrence in Armin’s life. He imagined it probably was. “They want French people, Eren. Because, you know, we’re in _France_.”

“I can speak French!” Eren fired back. “I want to get something so bad, I’ll do anything right now.” He levelled his gaze with Jean’s and said in a dead tone, “I’d suck dick for a break. I’d suck a thousand dicks.”

“You know, that’s statistically impossib-”

“A **_thousand_** , Armin.”

Jean let out a small chuckle. This was apparently exactly the wrong thing to do, for Eren rounded on him in an instant. “What about you, Hemingway? Come up with the next greatest novel yet?”

Jean blinked. “Uh…” He really wanted to tell Eren that he had, that he was writing his Magnus Opus that would make him a millionaire and he could live off its profits. In all honesty, he knew that Eren would not believe him if he told him he’d written a postcard. He wetted his lips and gave a loose shrug. “It’s coming along,” he tried.

Eren’s brow quirked. “Got a plot?”

“Uh…”

“Characters?”

“Uh…”

“A theme?”

“Alright smart arse, no need to show off,” Jean grumbled, plucking his notebook from his bag and wrenching it open to the first page. “My deadline’s in a week and I haven’t written a single word, happy now?”

“Smug, but not _happy_.” Eren scooted closer, and Jean felt the weak press of Eren’s head against his knee. He tried his best not to twitch it away- the crawl under his skin wasn’t as strong as it used to be, but it still held a kick. “Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a complete dick. I do enjoy seeing the triumphs of others.”

“You’re in the wrong fucking building then.”

“Touché.” Eren butted his kneecap before Jean could get too bogged down in the gory details of his lack of wordcount. “So what’s up buttercup, lost your mojo?”

Jean felt himself deflate. _Or not._

Armin looked up from their book, glad that Eren’s tidal wave of angst had passed and the coast was clear for a decent conversation. “You can’t give up just because you have writer’s block,” they said. “You have to push through it. It’s like hitting a mental wall when you’re exercising. If you let it knock you back, you’ll be stuck forever.”

Jean nodded and tried to smile. He didn’t quite get there. Armin was trying their best to cheer him up, he knew that, but their words fell flat. Armin could read something about block and pretend to know what it felt like, but only Jean knew how much agony it was to know there was a story wriggling around on the hook and it was impossible to reel it in quickly enough. At least, he was the only one who knew what it was like for _his_ story.

“Speaking of being stuck here forever,” Eren piped up, “You got something in your mail slot. C’mon dude, you know when you start getting mail to this shithole that it’s all over.”

Jean frowned. “What kind of mail?”

Armin chewed their lip so much that it flushed pink under duress. “We didn’t read it, but it looks a little like a letter. A handwritten letter.”

The temperature change in his body was so sudden it was as though ice water had been poured over his head. He didn’t want to ask any more questions. He already knew what the letter was. How _she_ had managed to get hold of where he was living was far more important than what was in the letter itself. “Ah,” he managed to say.

“Maybe you should see what she has to sa-”

“We have nothing to talk about.” Jean stared pointedly at one of the crumpled sunflowers on Armin’s dress. “I came out here because she dumped me. Whatever she has to say isn’t worth my time.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, willing the cold to trickle out of him and return him to room temperature once more. He hated how much it still hurt, gnawing away at his innards like a determined little rat. Telling people that he was over it definitely didn’t make it so. “I just need to start writing again,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “That way I can forget about her _properly_.”

Armin gave him a pitying glance that made Jean bristle with the beginnings of an argument, but before he could spit out the first venomous word, a head popped around the door. Jean only had time to register that it was That Weird Girl From The Floor Above before she demanded, “You guys aren’t busy are you?!” She was in a waitress uniform, complete with white frilly apron. Jean’s mind ran at a thousand miles an hour wondering what kind of strange fantasy she was playing out until he saw the unmistakeable sight of a name badge pinned to her chest. The illusion was further lost at the sight of her eye-wateringly green Doc Martin boots.

As he gawped, Eren merely rolled his eyes. “Yes Sash’, can’t you see we’re having a gigantic orgy right now?”

“You wish,” Armin muttered.

Eren peered at him. “What if we did just do each other one day?”

“Sorry, no can do. I’m adverse to sleeping with someone who brushes his teeth over a toilet bowl.”

“Oh for the love of- that was **_one time!_** ”

“I rest my case.”

“THE SINK WAS CLOGGED OKAY.”

“Guys, come _on_ ,” she wailed from the doorway.

Jean frowned. Now he thought about it, he did recognise her. Behind the black and white frills and formality, it was Pastry Girl- so named because she constantly brought back slightly stale bakery products for the hostel to fall on like rabid dogs. Jean had personally never seen her out of slobby T shirts and tracksuit bottoms, but hey at least one of them was working. “What is it?” he asked. Pastry Girl wasn’t usually the type to look in a hurry. Jean hadn’t been sure she had the capacity for that. Still, there was a wild look in her eye that he recognised to be urgency, and it finally warmed the cold water in his veins.

“We’ve got a code yellow!” she crowed. “We have to go help!”

Code yellow. It had taken a while for Jean to get used to all these different types of code. They weren’t necessarily needed; an ex resident made them up during a particularly unproductive day and it had just become firmly lodged in Sawney & Bean Hostel lore. ‘Code yellow’ was a strange one. It meant that someone was being kicked out of their place, and it might get nasty. “It’s not too far away,” she was saying, “so if you follow me I can take you there!”

Jean didn’t move, but watched as Armin got to their feet and brushed themselves down. “I’ll get my boots,” they said, and that seemed enough to rouse Eren. He took a laboriously long time to get up from the floor, his spine cracking as he stretched, and he threw a gaze over his shoulder at Jean. “What are you doing still here, Hemingway? Aren’t you coming with?”

“Though the thought of seeing a lush getting booted out of his bedsit is definitely a thriller, I’m fine here,” Jean said. He turned back to the bed and wondered if it was any comfier than his. It certainly looked that way. Maybe Eren or Armin wouldn’t mind if he just had a little rest…

“Oh, c’mon!” Eren threw his hands up in the air. “It’ll be… well, it won’t be fun but it’ll be something to do! Isn’t that what you writers want? Something to _do_?”

Jean frowned. Eren had a point there.

“Look, you better decide soon, Sasha’s foaming at the mouth over there,” Eren said.

Jean sighed. He didn’t really have much choice, not when Pastry Girl was glaring at him like it was his personal fault that an eviction was taking place. Jean sighed, and shouldered his jacket.

One thing he found was that Pastry Girl- Sasha- was remarkably fast when she wanted to be. After bursting out of their hostel’s double doors, Jean had a hard job keeping up with her. He wasn’t exactly the most athletic child in school, but he hadn’t realised how unfit he was until he had to chase after Sasha Braus, sprinter extraordinaire. He wondered where she got all the energy. Armin kept pace easily, their dress floating about them as they ran, but Eren too was panting and wheezing. Jean felt a kind of comradery blossomed between them as they met each other’s eyes and looked away, shamefaced. Their chase got them darting down alleyways and across roads (narrowly avoiding a car in the process), into sidestreets and out again. At one point, Jean was forced to duck to avoid a low hanging sign for some local business. He could vaguely see Sasha in front of him, a little smudge of white, black and green Doc Martins, and every now and again she would blip out of existence before reappearing again. Jean was about to give up and head back when in the distance he saw Sasha and Armin slow down before turning right. He skidded around the final corner and came face to face with what she had been calling them for.

In all honesty, the place was a dive. The windows were boarded up, there were eviction notices posted in every language he could think of across the door like some bizarre wallpaper and there was a general stench of something rotting nearby. Jean wrinkled his nose. Eren was right- this really put things into perspective. The entire building seemed to be begging for death.

The people defending its bleak existence were in the midst of a shouting match. It didn’t seem evenly matched, either. The people being dragged bit by bit from their home looked like four students or twenty-somethings in various stages of undress-but wearing matching expressions of rage. Their opponents were what Jean assumed were bailiffs (‘huissiers’ Armin corrected under their breath a beat later) but would have looked more at home in a French re-enactment of _Scarface_.

Even Eren didn’t look keen to get involved. “Those guys are fucking _shredded_ ,” he commented as one of them gave a girl a hefty shove. “They look like they’ve killed a guy. They look like they’ve killed _several_ guys.”

Jean scoffed. “Wouldn’t be surprised.” Places down shady alleys didn’t work under usual laws, Jean had been quick to find out; landlords took matters into their own hands and ended up just hiring muscle to rough tenants up and throw them out by any means necessary.

He watched in a kind of detached fascination as one of the evictees, one of the girls, got up in the face of a _hussier_ and bellowed something in French at him whilst the others stood firm. The freckles that scattered her cheeks did nothing to soften the hard lines of her face, and there was a feral way in which she glared and spat at the _hussiers’_ feet. The other girl, a little blonde, tugged at her friend’s sleeve insistently, but it did no good. Freckles batted Blondie away like a gnat, still snarling. There was a predatory look to her, like she would quite happily take on the _hussiers_ and win. Jean didn’t want to stick around too long to find out.  

As they watched a final person stumbled out of the building, flanked by a man whose face did a very good impression of a root vegetable. Jean didn’t get to see much. Everything moved so fast. He caught sight of a few freckles and large eyes behind thick rimmed glasses before he vanished behind the shouting French girl, dragged there by his tormentor. The sudden swell of outrage from the group, rising like a sea above the _hussiers_ , was enough to suggest that something was either being taken from him, or there had been a few punches thrown.

Jean was fed up of seeing the same old thing happening across the city. There were enough evictions in this part of the city that meant he walked past them every day. Everyone struggled, everyone was ‘getting by’, dangling helplessly until a landlord rose up to snip the thread. These were just another group of people down on their luck, and instead of offering them help or shelter, they were just kicked out like stray dogs. Something already frayed inside of him snapped.

“Hey!” he shouted. His voice was embarrassingly loud.

All heads snapped to him. Sasha hissed a, “what are you _doing?_ ” but Jean ignored it.

“What good is just kicking these people out of their home, huh?” he demanded, sounding a lot braver than he felt as he stormed up to the first man he saw. It happened to be the one who had reappeared from behind the mob of people, the one who had an unfortunate face.

The _hussier_ looked blankly down at him. The thought occurred to Jean that he probably didn’t speak English. Good. He couldn’t get impounded for swearing at an enforcer of the law- or get ‘taken care of’ by a mob boss for insulting his pet muscle. Both were equally feasible, and equally a plus. Jean was forced to crane his neck to look up at the guy, and he felt the bottom fall out of his courage. He never was great at picking fights.

The man regarded him with a calm intrigue before he tapped his friend on the shoulder and gestured to Jean. “ _Anglais,”_ he grunted.

His brother in arms seemed relieved for an excuse to turn his back on the still shouting girl. As he turned, Jean saw his muscles flex. “It is not your problem, English,” he sneered, “It is no your business. You leave.”

Jean curled his lip. “No.”

That caused another sneer. “You say no?” the translator demanded.

Jean hesitated. The sensible answer would be ‘no sir, I’m sorry sir, please don’t punch the ever-living daylights out of me sir’, and it was already beginning to come out of his mouth until he let his eyes trail over the group staring at him. They didn’t look like wide-eyed innocents. Far from it, they looked positively criminal. There were two men, one blonde and built like a rugby player from back home and the other dark and thin and twitching like a nervous racehorse. Blondie had hold of the thin one’s hand, her eyes fixed accusingly on Jean. The other one, the man that had been jostled out, wasn’t among them. Jean swept his gaze along the whole group, and saw nothing worth pitying. But there was a hollow, hostile kind of hope in the ringleader’s eyes, the girl, that steeled Jean’s nerve. He levelled his gaze with the _hussier_ and clenched his jaw. “I’m not asking,” he said, “I’m telling.”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot, Hemingway!” Jean heard Eren shout behind him.

Jean clenched his fists. “You’ve got them out of the place, so why don’t you just go?”

The translator blinked. “Excuse?” he asked.

“What, you deaf as well as thick? Leave the poor fuckers alo-”

The punch came before Jean could finish his sentence. The _hussier_ ’s fist was like a small boulder smashing into the centre of his body, and all Jean could do was crumple around it like paper. A grunt he could have lived down- the strangled little squeak he let out as he sank to the floor was definitely something he couldn’t. _Yep_ , he thought to himself, _I am an idiot._

He heard more than saw Eren surging to the rescue, shouting and swearing and brandishing his fists, but all he could hear was a clamour of French and Eren’s butchered equivalent as he did his very best impression of a cavalry charge. “Bring it on, you French pricks!” he shouted.

“Oh for goodness’ sake,” Armin sighed.

Jean was hauled to his feet by one of the others, but before he could react he was almost floored by another punch. This one caught him right across the eye. “Ow, _FUCK_ ,” he shouted, “I didn’t even _say_ anything that time!”

“No,” said his rescuer, “but Eren definitely did.”

Jean recognised the soft tones as Armin.

“Then why didn’t they hit him?!” he demanded, jerking a hand towards what he assumed was Eren. His vision was still swimming a little.

Armin shrugged. “You’re closer. Plus, have you ever tried hitting Eren?”

Everything became a bit foggy and full of flailing bodies after that. Jean ducked to avoid another punch and wriggled free of Armin’s grip, content to just slither along the dirty pavement on his belly until he found a post where he could haul himself vertical. When he found one, he got halfway up before he glimpsed Eren taking a few steps back. As he watched, trying in vain to blink away the concussion that was sure to come later, Eren charged straight into the balder _hussier_ with his head down. In the clamour of noise and violence, Jean caught sight of the guy in glasses walking away. He glanced over his shoulder just the once, but Jean swore he saw him smile.

* * *

He couldn’t actually remember Sasha wading in and saving Eren from being dumped in the Seine, nor could he remember the evictees declining Sasha’s offer of a place to stay for the night. All he did know was that he woke up on his bunk back the next morning with a headache drumming a solo into his temples and a right eye that couldn’t open from the swelling. He reached up a hand to trace the curve of his nose. It wasn’t broken- a good start. His skin felt too warm and tender to be unblemished, though.

“Before you ask,” Connie called from outside the curtain, “yes you have a black eye, and yes it looks bad.”

Jean passed a hand over his face and groaned. Of _course_ he had a black eye when he needed to get interviews. Of _course_ he’d picked a fight with the worst possible person to pick a fight with in the whole of the city. He knew he’d said he wanted to live and see the world when he left home, but a close up of a French _hussier_ ’s fist definitely wasn’t what he’d had in mind. He stared up at his ceiling as best he could through his swelled eye – which wasn’t very well at all- and tried to remember how he’d got himself into this mess. He made a silent vow to himself that it would be the last time he tried to get involved in something that didn’t concern him. He turned over onto his side and winced at the sudden tired ache from where he’d been punched in the stomach. Hopefully, that one wouldn’t bruise too much.

He slapped a hand around on his bed idly for a few minutes, half-heartedly searching for his typewriter, and when his hand felt the cold metal he scooted into a sitting position, hissing through his teeth as the dull ache rocked through him again. This was stupid. He was stupid. He had to write.

Connie regarded him warily from his place on the desk. “Don’t move too fast. You’ll pass out again.”

Jean frowned. “I passed out?” Trying to talk felt like too much effort. He made a note not to try again too soon.

“Not exactly. You were pretty out of it though, Armin said you were sort of walking around in a daze.” Connie squinted at him. “You haven’t got concussion have you?”

“Mmmdunno.” Jean fed a piece of dog-eared paper into the typewriter and got his hands poised over the keys. Something was there, an idea trotting around the back of his mind just waiting to be caught, and he’d be damned if he let it get away this time. “Feel a bit woozy…”

“You insured?”

Jean peered over the top of the typewriter and squinted. “Connie, who the hell in this building is insured?”

“Fair point.”

Jean jabbed at the typewriter for a few blissful minutes before the idea slipped away. He swore under his breath and raked a hand through his hair. It stuck up on end a little too long to be clean, and he made a note to brave the journey to the communal shower when he was sure everyone else on the floor was asleep that night. He wasn’t a fan of being walking in on naked by beautiful cabaret girls or dirty old hippies. He reached for his battered old folder that held the measly remains of a manuscript. It was the best of a bad bunch, and the only one who had been spared the flames during the previous winter. Jean traced the corner of the pages with a thumb like it was a sleeping child and he the proud parent, but the frustration welled to the surface again. He could write before. Why couldn’t he write now? He drew his hand away and ruffled his hair again. “What’m I doin’?” he mumbled.

“What was that?”

Jean glanced away. He had complained to Connie before. They had sat up all night talking about it. Connie tried to help, bless his heart, but there was only so much sympathetic tutting and comforting shoulder pats he could give until it all felt patronising or tired. Jean didn’t blame him; complaining non-stop was not a good character trait of his. It was this knowledge that made him mutter a short, “nothing,” in response and set his typewriter back down. Writer’s block was beginning to cling to him like a bad smell. He didn’t appreciate it. “I’m going out,” he announced, flinging his legs over the side of the bunk and staggering to his feet.

When he plucked a shoe from a pile of unfinished skirts, he saw that Connie was sat at the desk with a concerned frown on his face. He didn’t like the way Connie watched him sometimes- it was like he expected him to fall flat on his face every second. Today was no exception; to top it off Connie tried (and failed) to hide his wince at the black eye. Jean rolled his eyes. _Yes, yes, we’ve all established that I’m a walking disaster, no need to judge me for it too._ “Okay,” he said eventually. “You gonna be okay with that eye?”

“I’ll survive.” Jean made a point of flattening his voice as far as possible, just to show how unimpressed he was with Connie caring about him. All he got in return was a loose shrug and the back of his roommate’s head.

“Whatever dude, your funeral. Don’t get lost again.”

The ‘ _again’_ hurt a little. It had only happened once. Okay, twice.

Jean snorted, but it didn’t sound as bad tempered as he meant it to. He took his room key off the little hook on which it dangled, driven into a faded cork board. He couldn’t be mad. Living with up to six different people at any one time meant that being annoyed was a pointless activity- especially since the guy was only worrying about him. Connie was allowed to worry. It was sort of nice that he did, in a way. “Leave some food for me, I might be out late,” he muttered as he reached the door.

“Got plans, have we?” Connie asked.

Jean paused. “I’m not coming back until inspiration strikes.”

Connie looked back to the desk, and the handheld camera that sat squat between his hands and a pile of old books. “I’ll start writing the condolence letters to your folks.”

Jean brandished his middle finger at him and left.

* * *

The streets of Paris were never lonely. Jean was sure that no matter what time you stepped outside, you would share your path with at least one more soul. Paris was like that; it swallowed people whole, turned them into shadows and wraiths that danced across its cobbles at every possible hour. Jean could see why. The city had a depth to it that Jean’s home didn’t. There was something more, something ancient that gnawed at his bones and reminded him that underneath his feet were catacombs stretching for miles, and far more besides. Jean couldn’t deny how quickly he’d fallen in love with the place after stepping off the plane, but the city had lost its enchantment the moment he’d been handed a bill he couldn’t pay and a room he couldn’t keep to himself.

There was an overall greyness to Paris in the autumn that Jean hadn’t expected. There was an especially grey haze over it that morning, and Jean regretted not grabbing his coat on the way out. Finding the more colourful patches of city turned into a treasure hunt this time of year, according to the hostel veterans, but Jean had managed to find his own little patch down a small cobbled road out of sight of the usual tourist trail. Of course, the occasional traveller found it- that was, after all, how Jean came to it- but it was never as busy as the main streets or the landmarks. As he walked under the little arch that may well have been built in the medieval period for all the history he knew, the sound of a busker somewhere plucking strangled chords out of a tired instrument flowed past his ears. It wasn’t a bad sound. It wasn’t a good one either. It was the norm, however, and Jean couldn’t help but smile at that.

The place was a square, cobbled like the rest of the streets surrounding the hostel but far less packed with people. A few buildings, derelict or restored into coffee houses now, looked down on it from doleful windows. At first Jean had been worried that he’d been trespassing on some aristocrat’s land, but the square didn’t seem to be owned by anyone. It had this glow about it, even in the cold; the air was warmed by musician’s breath and French laughter. Jean liked it.

In its centre was a round plinth on which stood a stone statue no one could interpret since the years had eaten away its defining features, but it made a very good propping post. That was precisely what Jean used it for, after dumping his bag beside him and sitting down on the plinth with a grunt. The music persisted. Jean didn’t mind. It made him forget about the bill he had hanging over his head, his aching eyeball, and helped him focus on the little leather notebook he’d pulled out of his bag. He took out a pencil, hesitated, and then started scribbling.

It didn’t take long, however, for him to become distracted.

It wasn’t the musician that caught his eye, but the sight of a figure crouched at the far corner of the square. He was nothing special from where Jean was standing. His shirt was dirty, his jeans were faded and riddled with holes and his shoes looked like they’d seen better days. There was a wholesomeness about him though, something warm and fresh, that made Jean think that he wasn’t just a street beggar. Jean hadn’t even noticed him coming in; he’d blended into the brickwork like a smudge, and Jean almost felt bad for ignoring him. The guilt died pretty quickly when he watched the guy get onto his hands and knees and start _crawling around_.

Jean blinked a few times- his wounded eye just twitched. Muscles pulled taut under the shirt as the man moved, his shoulders looking broad from the angle he watched him. Performance art was really going places in Paris, if the authorities were happy to have a grown man crawling around on their streets. Jean realised his mistake when, after a moment, the figure straightened up with a piece of chalk in his hand and a breezy smile directed at nobody in particular. Then he saw something else. Glasses. The guy had thick rimmed, tortoiseshell glasses. He wasn’t wearing them at the moment, but Jean had noticed them tucked into the neckline of his shirt. It had only been a fleeting glimpse yesterday, but it had to be the guy from the building. It couldn’t be anyone else- no one else would have glasses that old fashioned and look _gleeful_.

Jean caught himself smiling back at the stranger, and bit it back with a shake of his head and a stubborn press of the pencil against paper. Where was he? Right, halfway through a sentence. _Damnit…_

Jean tried to write for a beat longer, but after the sentence remained unfinished, plucked before its time from the root of his mind, he bit his lip and chanced another look up at the artist. The entirety of his forearms were clouded in chalk dust, Jean noticed, muted greens and blacks and whites that painted accidental inverted sunsets across his skin. Every now and again, he would stop scratching chalk into the smooth flagstones and use the side of his palm to smudge or blend. Jean was close enough to notice the way he bit his lip when he did this, the slight pink of a tongue darting out as he concentrated. His eyes were on nothing else but the ground, darting only to the movement of his smudging hand and the curve of his chalk strokes. The man could have been anywhere, and nothing would have moved him. He was completely and utterly focused, intent on nothing but the little world he was creating in front of him. Jean knew, because he’d been in the same place before. He missed that feeling like a phantom limb; when he’d been able to write, he could sink into his own little created world and not surface again for minutes, hours, days on end. The absence of that feeling gave a jealous bite, and he forced himself to finish his sentence. It read like Styrofoam. Jean grimaced.

He’d attracted an audience; a young girl dragged her despairing mother over to him, pointing and chattering in a rushed, helter-skelter French. If the excited look on her face was anything to go by, she wasn’t exactly scrutinising the use of colour in composition- but it wasn’t a criticism either. The man looked up at the sound of her voice and offered an artist’s smile, the kind that was conscious but aware of his own talent. The mother said something in French, too quick for a conversationalist like Jean to catch, but the artist heard it loud and clear.

“Merci beaucoup, Madame. Je suis reconnaissant,” he said, his voice thrumming with warmth.

Jean shoved his face firmly into his notebook and gave the plinth a feeble kick with his heel. He had to stop spying on people. If he wasn’t going to write, he had to leave. He remembered his bold statement to Connie and cursed himself. Inspiration was not going to come. It was there, but dancing out of reach like a fairy with a fucking death wish. He drew his knees up to his chest and knocked his forehead against them with a grunt.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that, mentally beating his brain to come out with something that didn’t sound contrived or purple prose-y (he had a very bad habit of dumping metaphors onto a page like a truckload of corpses), but it was long enough for the weather to turn. He felt the drop of rain on his hand first, a single drop that soon increased to a light speckling. He only looked up when the droplets started coming down quickly, and as he did he saw the artist. Still there, but looking up at the sky with a pout of his bottom lip and a frown on his face. Jean shouldered his bag, clutched his betrayed notebook to his chest and made the call to leave. Maybe Connie wouldn’t be there to gloat too much. He walked towards the archway leading back to the main street- but not before he glanced down at what the man had drawn.

And promptly dropped his notebook.

The artist had drawn a magpie. Of all the birds to pick, a magpie was a bit of an odd choice, but it worked. Down to the metallic sheen of the wings and the beady glint in its empty black eyes, it looked _alive_ to Jean. Maybe there was a metaphor wedged in there somewhere: a bird craving shiny objects in a city with no such trinkets on offer sounded like a perfectly good metaphor, even if it did wind Jean a little with its honesty. In the bird’s mouth was a ribbon, mossy green in colour, that drooped from its beak and looped around its hooked claws. There was the beginning of a second ribbon, but it was nothing but a faint outline on the flat stone.

“Excuse moi monsieur?”

Jean jolted out of his reverie by the moth-eaten corner of his notebook pressing into his arm. He looked down at it, puzzled, and then up at the man who held it. There was no mistaking that it was the guy from the eviction. Up close, Jean could see the dimples that appeared when he smiled, the way his hair flopped uselessly over his eyes and needed to be blown aside with an artful puff. It was cute, in a French kind of way. Not that the guy looked that Parisian; he didn’t have that resigned, grizzled look Jean often saw on the local faces.

Jean had been staring too long.

He took the notebook with a jolt, cradling it in his fingers, and when he looked up the boy was smiling expectantly. “Uh…mercy bow-coo?” he tried. The language was butchered on his too sharp vowels.

The boy noticed. One of his dark eyebrows fell up, disappearing for a moment into his hair. The smile still remained, even as the speckles of rain began to dampen his shirt. Jean felt like he was being scrutinised, but not necessarily in a bad way. He flushed under the intensity of the guy’s stare, and mentally cursed himself for it.

“I’m not French,” he blurted, and promptly wanted to smack himself in the face with his notebook.

The boy looked confused for a moment, but then a quiet laughter rose from his mouth that just made Jean flush more. This was stupid. He was making a fool of himself in front of some artist he didn’t even know, and he had failed to write a single cohesive sentence. Today sucked. He turned to leave, shame still burning up his cheeks, but a voice stopped him.

“’Emingway!”

Jean turned around. “P-pardon?”

The artist tilted his head to one side, like a dog watching something of great interest to it. “You’re ‘Emingway, yes?” he asked. His words, unlike Jean’s with French, were stretched and slow, like he had all the time in the world to speak. There was a distinct French accent there, but there was something else too- Jean wasn’t sure _what,_ exactly, but something.

Jean blinked. _Hemingway?_ Then he realised- back at the old building, Eren had called out to him. He’d called him that stupid fucking nickname. “Uh, that’s not my actual name,” he said.

The boy frowned. “English?” he tried.

_Ah, of course you fucking tool. He doesn’t know English._ “Uh, oui,” Jean tried again, “Ang-lay?”

Another laugh. “Please, ‘Emingway, stop before you hurt yourself.”

Jean scowled. This was precisely the reason why he’d been bought a French phrasebook by his concerned mother the day he’d set out. He really shouldn’t have sold it to pay for an application entry. That was the first of many bad moves. This was usually when he scoffed and stormed away, muttering darkly under his breath and nursing his wounded pride, but he found he just _couldn’t._ “Excuse me for not knowing every French word in the dictionary,” he muttered.

“ _Anglais_ is quite common.” Jean tried to ignore the fact that he’d been successfully sassed by a guy who didn’t even have English as his first language. “It is good that we bumped into each other. I wanted to say thank you for yesterday.” He inclined his head slightly in mock of a bow. “I did not expect a complete stranger to help me.” He straightened up and gave a little frown. “But it seems you were given a present from _les voyous._ ” When Jean looked confused, he corrected, “thugs.”

Jean blinked. “Uh, it was nothing, don’t worry about it man.” _Man. I’ve been living with Connie too long._ “It was my own fault. I had it coming to me.”

“It is stupid, picking fights with men like that. But I am still thankful.” The guy nodded like that was the end of the matter, yet his eyes still roved over the nicely purpling bruises. In an attempt to change the subject, he brought his attention to the work of art at his feet and the smile came back like it jogged a memory. “I saw you looking at my work over there. Do you like it?”

Jean stared down at it too. A part of him, the part of him that was a bitter asshole, wanted to say he hated it. He did, in a way; he hated the fact that this guy could just grab a slab of chalk and draw on the floor and people watched him do it and gave him tips. He hated the talent he possessed to be able to just _do_ it, as simply as that, whilst he had to spend hours mentally preparing himself to reach a good point on his work. He couldn’t deny, however, how beautiful the finished product was. He admitted rather feebly, “it’s amazing,” then added a little bitterly, “if you like birds.”

The man snorted. “Ah, I guess that is true. The little girl from before, she likes birds. Her mama told me so.” He tilted his head again. “Are you a tourist? Student?”

“I live here. Until my Visa kicks me out.” Jean didn’t want to think about the day _that_ happened. “I’m trying to make things work here. I wouldn’t mind living here permanently, y’know.”

“Ah, I see.” The man’s eyes were dark, Jean noticed, like the burnt sienna you found in the average paint selection. Jean had always wondered why such a boring colour had such a fancy name, but watching the deep brown curl around the stranger’s pupils gave him a hint of an answer. “You are one of the ever-so-charming starving artists.” There was a twinkle in his eye Jean couldn’t place. “I am also one of these.”

Jean blinked. “Really?”

He was given a loose shrug in reply. “I would not be drawing on the street if I could afford paper.”

“Ah.”

“I am Marco,” the man said, thrusting out a hand so enthusiastically that it made Jean snort. “It is good to meet you, Hemingway.”

“Jean,” he corrected, “my name is Jean.” Still, the way Marco said it caused something to purr deep down in his gut. He could get used to that warmth. He took his hand, and felt the chalk dust pass over onto his palms as they shook with identical grins. “Nice to meet you too, Marco.”

Marco beamed at the sound of his voice in Jean’s accent, and looked back up at the sky. It was becoming darker, like someone was dropping ink blots bit by bit into the clouds. He sighed sadly. “It looks as though it is going to be a wet day,” he said. “I think I should take shelter somewhere soon. I know a good place, cheap coffee. Would you like to join me?”

Jena blinked. “Me?” he asked. It was a stupid question, but he didn’t really get invited to much, owing to Eren dubbing him, ‘the stick in the mud at any social gathering’. Marco, thankfully, didn’t mock him. He simple gave an earnest nod. Jean wasn’t sure whether it was because he really wanted him there, or he was just desperate to get out of the rain. For a second, he was going to say yes. But then the self-doubt came creeping back in, and he shook his head to dispel it all. “Sorry, I’m, uh… I’ve got an interview,” he said.

If he was disappointed, Marco didn’t show it. He merely shrugged and gave another beaming smile that threatened to knock Jean right down on his cynical behind. “That is okay. I will see you somewhere around soon, I am sure.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Jean blurted out. His eagerness made the end of his sentence a little too shrill to be normal.

Marco just laughed, turned on his heel and walked away. He only took a few steps before turning back. “You need to put a cream on that black eye, Hemingway,” he said. “You be careful- you look after it safe!” he let another little laugh out, and walked away for good. Marco had a little bop to his gait that was equal parts endearing and childish, and Jean watched his form get swallowed up by the grey people milling around outside one of the many chic restaurants of the district with a rather starved feeling in his stomach.

He realised too late that he kind of really _had_ wanted to go with Marco to get coffee.

He was left in the courtyard on his own, with the rain beginning to fall regularly enough to get him damp in a few minutes. He looked down at his hand, still pale with chalk dust, and clenched his fist with a sigh. He threw his head back and closed his eyes, the epitome of a cliché bouncing through his head.

_Fuck._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A long awaited update to the good ol' JeanMarco bohemian au I started writing for Lucy's birthday and didn't finish and now I have picked up and (I promise!) will finish at some point. But anyway, here's one big chapter so I can't be told off completely, right?
> 
> I have a lot of fun writing this au; Paris is such a great city to play around with, and though writing it in an actual city is a bit of a challenge (I haven't done anything in an ACTUAL EXISTING city for a while) it's a nice sorta challenge. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and I would love it if you left a review or some kudos cus that gives me that sweet release of validation. Many thanks!~

That same word followed Jean around for the next few days. It intruded in what felt like every waking moment, from his attempt at a job interview that failed the second he walked through the door to the evening he’d spent picking up almost out of date cans of soup – _soup –_ at a local supermarket.

_Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck **fuck.**_

Jean hadn’t realised that he could feel more stale than he had before – but his mind, charming as it was, had delighted in proving him wrong. Now he felt less like he was thinking his way through mist, and more like he was trying to craft something out of unnameable sludge in his mind. It happened. Jean knew that more than anyone. A chance meeting with someone else creative and looking to make a difference to the world tended to rattle his fickle abilities – but this was ridiculous.

Jean caught himself wondering, a week later, whether he was ever going to be able to write again.

He had used the meagre amount of savings he had on a sub-par coffee in a shop that smelt like the colour brown. The coffee, on the other hand, tasted a lot like the colour grey, with just a dash of black. He drank it anyway, wincing as it burned all the way down his throat. The other patrons ignored him, dismissing him as just another one of the broken artists Paris chewed up and spat out onto its cobbled streets. Jean ignored them just as much.

It wasn’t the best coffee shop by any means, but it was the kind of place that wasn’t easily found. Like a homing instinct, Parisians flocked here in quiet, sombre groups – and not a single tourist followed. Jean liked that. The only thing that set him apart was that his notebook, still open, had English words scribbled feverishly upon it instead of French.

Jean was, in a sense, sulking. He hated the word, but he couldn’t help but admit that was exactly what he was doing. He was sulking because, as Connie had so lovingly put it, he was quite possibly the biggest idiot this side of the Seine. It hadn’t been an argument; Connie had simply said what Jean didn’t want to hear, and he hadn’t appreciated it. He _knew_ he was an idiot – he didn’t need Connie telling him so. After all, he’d been so busy bitching about how nothing interesting ever happened to him, and someone who was very clearly interesting had walked into his life and walked straight out again. And what was worse, something _ached_ as he left. Nothing had ached in a while. Nothing had ever ached for a guy, either.

Jean took another sip of the terrible coffee and looked down at his meagre notes. A surge of secondhand embarrassment rose up the back of his throat that had nothing to do with the coffee, and he pushed the notebook away from him. People had blocks. It wasn’t something reserved for him. It was hard to imagine anyone else feeling as strangled, as frustrated, as _angry for no reason_ as he did. There was, granted, a sort of comfort at the thought of F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein throwing their own coffee cups down on tables and tearing their hair out at a particularly tricky paragraph.

He set his coffee down and snatched up the book that had been set spread eagled on the table. _Howl & Other Poems. _Beat poetry was the sort of thing Jean’s professor at university had loathed; he said it wasn’t any sort of poetry at all. For Jean, Ginsberg read like the best kind of white noise.

He was halfway through _Howl_ itself when the door of the coffee shop jingled open. Jean glanced up out of habit, and saw the chalk artist walk inside. He trapped his page with a hand and watched as the man walked up to the counter and leant against it, talking easily with the barista and laughing about something Jean couldn’t understand. It wasn’t the first instance that Jean wished he understood French a little more; the pawned phrasebook and meagre lessons in school weren’t exactly the best grounding in the language. This wasn’t a basic or conversational French either; this was fluent. The chalk artist’s vowels were soft and elongated, every edge of his words smoothed by his tongue. The barista gave him a playful tap on the shoulder and turned to begin making his drink, and it was then that the stranger’s eyes met Jean’s.

Jean blinked, just in case this was some sort of mirage or after-effect from the terrible coffee, and when the man didn’t melt away he tried a small, “Bonjour?” that felt a little pathetic and not at all pronounced correctly.

The artist – _Marco, his name was Marco_ – smiled back. “Bonjour, ‘Emingway.”

Jean couldn’t help the chuckle that came out of his mouth at the name. “Hi.”

“You said,” he pointed out.

Jean flushed. “Right, uh, yeah.”

Marco’s cheeks dimpled under the weight of his grin, and made his way over to Jean’s table. Jean wasn’t sure if he wanted company, but as Marco got closer he realised it was what he’d been wanting all day. “It is nice to see you again,” Marco said, and somehow Jean knew that he meant it. “I thought you might come back. To the square, I mean.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, well… time sort of ran away with me,” Jean said, suddenly feeling awful. He dropped his eyes down to his last dregs of coffee. “I had a lot of interviews.”

 “Did you not get the job last week?”

“What?” _Oh, yes. The interview he’d had to turn Marco down for._ “Uh, no, they… didn’t think my black eye was appropriate.”

Marco, thankfully, laughed. “Ah, ‘Emingway, you know very little of Paris if you think they will allow a common street thug like yourself into their work.”

“Do you really think I look like a thug?” snorted Jean.

Marco tilted his head, considering him for a moment. His eyes were those of an artist, darting this way and that across Jean’s face, mapping invisible lines that would never come to the paper. He hummed thoughtfully, and shrugged. “You are too skinny.”

“Great. Better tick that off the list of potential careers, then.”

Marco laughed again, and gestured to the empty seat. He didn’t wait for Jean to finish nodding; with a beam he sat, his knees knocking the table in his enthusiasm. The force almost tipped over the last of Jean’s coffee, but Marco caught the cup just in time. He set it down with still chalked hands, and rubbed them against his jeans with a bashful grin. He wasn’t wearing his glasses – they were tucked inside the chest pocket of his shirt, which was loose and speckled dark from the outdoors. As Marco shook his head, small droplets fell from his hair and landed in patches across Jean’s notebook. When he caught Jean staring, he let the smile widen. “It is raining,” he said, as if it needed explaining.

Jean wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Did you lose another drawing?” he found himself asking.

“Oh,” Marco waved a hand dismissively, “it was a bad picture. I do not mind. I am losing a lot of them lately.”

Jean watched the barista bring Marco’s drink over and gently earmarked his page. He could come back to it later.

Marco’s smile, he noticed, was something that didn’t waver; it changed shape all the time, growing and shrinking and twisting like an ocean tide, but it didn’t often fall from his face. Jean tended to hold a degree of suspicion on people who smiled too much, but Marco’s was the kind of smile that coerced you into smiling back. It was different.

He and the barista spoke in that same soft French for a few moments until the door rang again and another customer appeared. Once the barista disappeared, Marco picked up his cup and sipped carefully. It looked strangely purple. Jean wrinkled his nose. Aside from one aunt back home, he didn’t know anyone who drank herbal tea out of choice. The longer the teabag stayed in the cup, the deeper the colour became, and soon Jean could smell the muted berry flavour hanging in the air just above the cup. Marco hummed happily and set his cup down, content for a moment to sit in silence. Jean was fine with that. Artists, he’d found, liked silence just as much as writers did.

The coffee shop clattered noisily around them with cups and saucers and spoons, but Jean felt strangely cut off from it all. It felt the same way that writing did; there was always that moment, that blissful moment, where he had delved into a story and was swimming in it up to his neck. He would bob above the surface for a little while, trying to take in the noise and the talk from everything around him… and then he would duck under the surface and get himself wonderfully, thoroughly lost. He missed that feeling. He even missed how disorientated he felt when he was forced to break the surface; the harsh breath of reality he had to draw into his lungs, however necessary, wasn’t ever a welcome.

Jean was so busy relishing in that muggy, inspired feeling that he hadn’t noticed Marco’s head tilt into a cupped hand, or the way his eyes were fixed solely on Jean himself. He did now. The surface rushed up all at once, and heat flared into his cheeks. “Sorry!” he said. “S-spaced out.”

Marco chuckled warmly. “It’s okay. This place has a special power. It lets all of your thoughts out to play.” His eyes looked darker today, like the sienna Jean had seen before had been set alight and turned to ash. Those same eyes, without warning, snapped wide open as they wandered onto the table.

“Ginsberg!” Marco cried delightedly, causing a few of the patrons around them to jump out of their skins and look up– Jean included.

“E-excuse me?”

Marco pointed gleefully at the cover of _Howl,_ which was now definitely covered in coffee. “Ginsberg!” he repeated, eyes shining.

Jean looked down at the book, and then back to Marco’s ecstatic face. “Uh…yes? Ginsberg?”

“You read him?”

Jean decided, wisely, to rein back his sarcasm. “Yeah,” he said, “I, uh, read him. I love Ginsberg, actually.”

“I love him also! He is a great poet. Very noisy.”

Jean found it in himself to crack a smile. It was the first one he’d offered since Marco sat down, and it was worth it to see Marco’s own smile warm like a radiator. “I just like how… obscure he is,” Jean admitted after a pause. “He helped start a new movement, made new rules for rhyme and meter…”

“You like his work because it is different?” guessed Marco.

“I like it because it’s _new_ ,” Jean corrected.

Jean felt that tickle of an artist’s gaze flick over him once more, but this time it seemed to delve a little deeper. “Is that what you want to be?” Marco asked, a brow slowly raising as he looked Jean over. “Something new?”

Jean looked down into the depths of his mug and shrugged. “Maybe I just want to be something different,” he said. “Have to be, if I ever want to get published. Else I’m stuck here.” He gestured at the coffee shop.

Obediently, Marco’s eyes followed his sweeping hand. Jean realised too late that he had taken his words literally. They both looked around at the old men in the corner playing chess, the businessmen talking in hushed voices over three gravelly americanos, and then on a young woman writing a postcard on the table beside them. Jean saw the people sink in and become something in Marco’s head, and missed his own muse like a homesickness.

Marco gave a little laugh, shaking himself loose of the reverie, and shook his head. “A coffee shop is not a bad place to be stuck,” he said.

Jean frowned. It hadn’t been what he was getting at, but it was nice of the guy to try. “I guess not.”

“I have some advice for you, ‘Emingway.” Marco leaned forwards, and Jean’s nose was assaulted by the smell of his musty shirt and old books. “Do not sit in coffee shops with Mr Ginsberg for company. You will start feeling sorry for yourself.”

Jean’s mouth snapped shut, without him realising it was open in the first place. _Well. That was **him** told._ “Do you have any better suggestions?” he asked, unable to help himself.

Marco hummed thoughtfully and leaned back. Jean almost missed that damp smell. “You are stuck?” he asked.

Jean wasn’t sure what part of his life Marco meant – ‘stuck’ was a depressingly perfect adjective for many aspects of it – but he nodded all the same. “Very stuck.”

“Very stuck…” Marco rolled the words around his mouth like they were a new taste he hadn’t sampled before. Jean watched him chew on them, waiting for a murky pearl of wisdom to come tumbling out, and when he drew breath he braced himself. “I think you should not be too hard on yourself. I think you need to enjoy where you are.”

“A hostel room I share with a drama student and a suitcase full of cancan skirts?” Jean replied dryly.

“Paris!” Marco spread his arms as though welcoming it in. “It is a good city! A city of inspiration, of mystery, of knowledge!”

“Just looks grey to me.”

Marco squinted at him. He had the audacity to look hurt – and what was worse, Jean felt _bad_ for letting that smile drop from the stranger’s face. “You are no longer looking at things as a writer,” Marco said matter-of-factly.

Jean flushed. “Wha- yes I am!”

“No you are not.” Marco took another sip of his bizarre tea and set it down again. “These streets are… are paper waiting to be sketched on. Do you not see this?”

Jean used to see it. Back when he’d first arrived, Paris was a playground with endless possibilities. He remembered the rush he’d felt when he stepped off the plane and saw everything flash past him in a blur of colour in the back of a taxi. He learnt quickly that Paris was kind and gentle to travellers in the daytime, and full of energy and noise in the evening. It was the sort of monster he wanted to conquer, back then. Back when he was with…

He shook himself with a deeper frown than before, and drew his shoulders up to his ears. He was getting cold. Maybe the weather was beginning to get to him; or maybe it was another kind of chill. “Do you still see it after getting kicked out of your place?”

Marco shrugged. “I am an artist. I know where to go to see what I want to see.”

Jean blinked. Oh God, the guy was serious; there wasn’t a hint of a joke on Marco’s face, even though Jean looked for it longer than perhaps he should have. “It honestly didn’t bother you? Getting kicked out?” When Marco shook his head, Jean didn’t know what else to say, except. “Oh.”

After a few minutes of silence and Jean trying to get the barista’s eye to get another coffee ordered, he decided the best question to ask Marco was, “Why were you getting kicked out anyway? There was an eviction notice, but it looked old.”

For the first time, Marco looked awkward. “Oh, yes.” He brought the mug of tea to his lips and blew on it gently. “I was, er, not meant to be there.”

Jean frowned. “You mean you couldn’t pay the rent?” The vague humming noise that came from Marco didn’t sound convincing. The penny dropped so heavily it felt like a boulder. “You were _squatting_?”

Marco smiled at him. “That is what you would call it, yes.”

Jean just stared at him. Marco continued to sip his tea, giggling softly at his reaction. He’d heard about squatters, of course; they were the people on television back home who didn’t have jobs, who broke into houses and set up shop with no intention of ever leaving. The definition he had in his head contrasted so sharply with that of the giddy person in front of him that Jean couldn’t quite get his head around it. That was the only logical explanation to why he chose to blurt out, “I’m having tea with a criminal,” a little too loudly.

The coffee shop’s ambience blipped, his voice loud enough to cause a ripple across the air above the diner’s heads. Marco was no longer giggling – he was _laughing,_ full on laughing, and to Jean’s horror he was blushing deeper than he ever had. “L-look, shut up!” he said amid Marco’s helpless spluttering, “Stop laughing, it just came out!”

Marco’s laughter was warm, like the crackles of a dying fire. Jean felt a tickle in his stomach at the sound, and he realised he wouldn’t mind hearing the noise a little longer. He made a conscious effort to drive that tickle down into his feet so he could stamp it out later.

When Marco finally stopped, he rocked back in his chair and wiped at his eyes with the last ebbs of laughter floating into the air above them. “Oh, ‘Emingway, you are funny. Are you always so…so…” Marco fumbled for the right word, and settled on, “truthful?”

It wasn’t necessarily the _right_ word, but Jean understood what he was getting at. He shrugged, still blushing a little too red to be taken seriously, and pretended to take a drink from his already empty coffee cup. “Most of the time,” he mumbled.

“It is…disarming. But it is also nice.”

“Nice?”

Marco hummed. “Mm. Nice.”

Jean made a very firm effort to glare into his coffee cup and not admit to how warm Marco’s comment made his chest. “Okay.”

Marco’s laughter roused his gaze up however. “You are a tomato,” he said.

Jean scowled. “I blush easy. Don’t judge.”

“I see that. And I do not make fun.” Marco leaned a little closer, his eyes dancing with mirth. “Fierce criminals like me are not the type to make fun.”

“Alright, alright,” Jean flapped away any attempts at further laughter. “Enough. I get it.”

“I suppose you are right, though.” Marco frowned at the thought. Something flickered on his expression that betrayed the anxiety underneath. He was worried. Maybe he hadn’t been able to find somewhere else, Jean thought as he watched him. He hadn’t been living on the streets, had he? No, he looked too clean for that. He was probably staying with friends, biding his time, waiting for an opportunity. It was the life Jean was used to, after all, and something he’d done a lot of when he was a teenager back home. Having something that was yours, even if it wasn’t quite true, must have been hard to walk away from. Marco sighed, and pushed his empty cup away from him. “But, I knew this already.”

Jean blinked. “And you’re okay with that?”

Marco winked. “I would tell you, ‘Emingway, but I would have to kill you.”

Jean snorted. “Of course.”

Marco stood up and fished a waifish bank note from his back pocket. “Would you like another of your terrible coffees? I will buy. It is the least I can do.”

Jean hesitated. This was the coffee meeting he’d wanted to accept last week, the one he’d declined and then felt snatched of something. He could go back to the pavements, slipping his short stories under the doors of publishing houses or journals. He could, though it pained him to think of it, look for a job. But with Marco’s earnest expression and the smell of brewing drinks curling around his nostrils, Jean found himself succumbing to the part of himself that had stepped off the plane that first day in Paris. He smiled, and nudged his coffee cup towards Marco. “Sure.”

His book stayed abandoned on the coffee table for the rest of the afternoon, the coffee stains still drying on its dog-eared, battered cover.

* * *

That evening, at three in the morning, Jean woke up and started to write.

He didn’t know what had come over him; it was as though the veil shrouding him had slipped for a moment. He fumbled for the typewriter in the gently swelling morning light and found it jammed against the door as a makeshift draught excluder. He set it down on the desk and, without any regard for Connie snoring above him, started to type. The keys sprung into life like they had been waiting for him, stretching and yawning as he rattled out words, sentences, _paragraphs._ Connie’s snores cut off after the third paragraph Jean managed to get out, and were replaced with wordless groans. Jean didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop. He had to keep going, had to keep chasing the idea until it whisked away down a rabbithole and out of sight…

He lost it.

He slumped back into his seat and ran a hand across his face, the block drifting back across his eyes and leaving him blinded. “Fuck!”

“My thoughts exactly,” slurred Connie’s dreary voice from the top bunk.

Jean ignored him. He let his hands drop back to the typewriter and began to read. Now he’d been pulled out of the writing stupor he’d fallen into, the words didn’t blur together quite right. He squinted at the page. Some of the structure was off, too. But he’d _written._ He’d written solidly for the first time in what felt like weeks. It was something new, something that didn’t feel like his narrative voice anymore. He liked to write stories that were barbed with realism and the occasional frank metaphor, but this…this was different. It flowed like water, the imagery and similies blurring together in a trickle to the end of the line. He’d written about a coffee shop.

He huffed out a proud laugh that was sworn down by Connie, and took the page off the typewriter. Some part of his mind told him that being proud of a half-page scene wasn’t the best use of his time, but for once he was able to ignore it. Ideas were starting to rouse from their slumber; he could feel them stretching their wings and warming themselves in the grey sun that threatened to burn through the thin fabric of their curtains. Fatigue tugged at his eyelids, but the reassurance that he wasn’t losing his touch cushioned him as he collapsed back onto his bunk. He didn’t worry too much about losing it again whilst he slept – he now knew where he had to go to write.

He set out to the same coffee shop later that day, his bag bulging with his unfinished manuscript and his notebook, and when he stepped inside the same smells rushed over him. He cheerily slapped down a handful of coins and asked for the cheapest coffee available, and the barista eyed him a little oddly as he set to making it. Jean took it, sat down, got out his notebook and…

Nothing. For three hours, nothing. His mind was just as blank as before, the ideas still hiding away in the depths of his mind. It was like they were toying with him, daring him to get them to come out again. Jean was determined not to let the entire coffee shop witness an English boy break down and cry, but his eyes were definitely flirting with the idea. He left before he could do any damage and started the long walk home, still chasing that light feeling from before. He thought he'd got it. He thought he’d cracked the code, the thing that was keeping him from getting anywhere with his writing, but maybe his flash of inspiration had been just that – a flash.

He went back to the hostel and tried his best to ignore everyone there, even Eren and Armin. Armin was an easy one to ignore; they rarely spoke at the best of times, and were far happier with their nose in a book than in other people’s business – but Eren was insistent that Jean talk to him. He was like a petulant child, banging on Jean’s door and jerking him free of a writerless workday. “Don’t let him in,” Jean growled as the fifth knock that day resounded on the wood.

Connie grimaced. “Dude, you’ve been stewing in your own weird misery for hours now. Let the guy talk to you. He might, god forbid, make you smile.”

“The only thing Jaeger makes me want to do is throw up,” Jean grumbled, though both he and Connie knew that wasn’t the case.

_BANG BANG BANG._

“Eren, fuck off!” Jean shouted.

“No!” Eren was anything if not persistent. “Come on, it’s all hands on deck down here, even grumpy useless writers.”

That did it. Jean launched himself from the desk ready to commit general homicide – but Connie got to the door first. He held it open, and made sure to block Jean from getting past him. “Jesus, we’re here. You sure know how to push buttons, Eren,” he said.

Eren flashed them a bright smile. “It’s a gift.” He was wearing a plaid shirt Jean knew for a fact he’d traded an ACDC shirt for (in all honesty, Jean wasn’t sure if the ACDC shirt was Eren’s to begin with either) and though it hung a little too long to fit well, it somehow suited him. That wasn’t really what he was here to talk about, though; Jean could see the little idiot bouncing on his heels in the space where Connie’s body couldn’t block him. “Come on, we have new guys moving in. The old bikers finally moved out.”

“And we give a shit about that, why?” Jean asked, shoving Connie to the side to get a better look at him.

Eren shrugged. “Well, we did it for you when you moved in. It’s only fair you come help someone else out.” Jean wanted nothing more than to slam the door in Eren’s face and go back to staring at his empty page, but something in his earnest expression made him hesitate. When he didn’t say anything, Eren sighed. “Sasha’s going to come drag you out by the ear if not, so I suggest you just come with me. It’ll be better for all of us.”

Jean glowered at him, but felt his resistance drain away. Something told him he didn’t want to get on the wrong end of Sasha’s temper. He shouldered past Connie and stepped out into the corridor, shoving his hands in his pockets and scowling at the beer bottles placed like small traffic cones around sleeping bodies. Eren raised a brow. “Thought you’d put up a bigger fight than that, Jean. Writing really must be going terribly.”

“And I’m guessing your big break is coming along real strong, is it?” Jean shot back.

He tried to ignore the wounded look that crossed Eren’s face before it settled back into the mask of amusement. Eren was good, but he wasn’t _that_ good. “Come on, grumpy guts, time to offload some of that wonderful charm.” Jean swiped for him but Eren was faster, darting out of the way with a short laugh and a beckoning hand. Jean rolled his eyes and made after him, trying to convince himself that this was a decision he’d made.

When he saw the group assembled in the bowels of the hostel, his step faltered. It was the two boys from the eviction, the blond rugby player and his twitchy – friend? Boyfriend? Jean wasn’t sure. They looked different in a less desperate light; Rugby had a broad smile on his face and a booming laugh that made his companion jump, and the other man looked a little less like he was going to melt into the pavement under the weight of his own sweat. As Jean reached the bottom of the stairwell, he noticed that they didn’t really have much to drag into the foyer of the tired, peeling hostel. In fact, they had one rucksack each that they seemed perfectly capable of carrying themselves. Sasha, bouncing around them in a rain mac and the infamous Doc Martins, had clearly just wanted to roll out the welcome wagon for their new guests.

Jean stood well back with his arms folded, taking in the newcomers’ bemused expressions as Sasha fired question after question at them like a game show host. The twitchy one stepped an inch closer to the rugby player, who ensnared him in a one-armed hug and simply laughed at Sasha’s enthusiasm.

“It was her idea,” Eren said, appearing to Jean’s left and making him jump. “She tipped ‘em off about the empty space. She figured it was the least she could do after seeing them get kicked out.”

Once Jean had recovered from the shock of the small wannabe actor popping into his peripheral vision, he folded his arms still tighter against his chest. “Where are the others? The ones that were with them?”

Eren shrugged. “Hell if I know. Happens all the time – thrown together by circumstance, drift apart if something else crops up. No loyalty amongst travellers.” He gave Jean a shrewd look that Jean didn’t like the look of. “Aw, don’t cry Hemingway, I’m sure your damsel in distress will come back soon.”

Jean willed the flush to stop creeping up his ears, but failed. “What are you talking about?” he snapped.

“He means,” Armin said, materialising by Jean’s right shoulder, “that they told Sasha to expect one more, but he’s working.”

“Jesus! Do you have to do that?! You’re like a fucking ghost!”

Armin just smiled. “I think it’s nice you’re making friends,” they said, speaking to Jean as though he was a five year old on a first day of school. “You always seem so…”

“Distant?” Eren guessed.

Armin frowned. “No, not that…”

“Ignorant?”

“Not that either…”

“Grumpy? Moody? Aloof?”

“Aloof! That’s it, exactly,” Armin beamed.

Jean deflated. “Wow. Thanks.”

Armin seemed unperturbed by Jean’s sullen glares. They continued to talk about the new arrivals and how the two boys they were all watching (Reiner and Bertholdt, Jean found out quickly) had come from Amsterdam and had met the two girls (the freckled one and the little blonde, Jean remembered) in Belgium a few weeks before. Strangely, no one spoke about Marco. Jean remained as stoic and ‘aloof’ as Armin thought he was, though on the inside something niggled at him, small and excitable. Marco would be in the same building. The curiosity the stranger sparked in him was kindling, now, and though Jean knew better than to get himself burnt, he couldn’t help but stoke the flames – just a little bit.

It turned out, however, that even living in the same building didn’t mean he had the chance to see Marco whenever he liked. The vacant rooms were on the top floor of the hostel, the rooms that were sure to have been the most expensive when the place was in the business of actually making money. Jean’s room, by contrast, was in the middle and smelt vaguely of cats and mothballs. Though he knew Marco would have to cross by his door to get to the stairs (the flights moved from one end to another on Jean’s floor), he never bumped into him. Marco was like some sort of Parisian Will O The Wisp who only ever appeared on his own terms, and vanished easily into the charcoal-dusted cobbles of the French squares.

It wasn’t as though Jean had actually been seeking him out; his writing piece post-coffee shop had slowly plodded into life and transformed from one page of dubious paragraphs to six on the ancient typewriter. Jean sacrificed two days and one soggy _pain au chocolat_ Connie had brought him to bring the coffee shop on his page to life with people and secrets. He’d opted to focus on the girl he had seen with Marco, the one who had been writing a postcard, though annoyingly her features kept drifting from the sharp sternness to freckles and bright smiles.

When he lost his thread on the third day, Jean decided to stop miming a beating around the head in frustration and take a walk. Marco had told him that Paris had more to offer, that it was a playground waiting to be explored – and who was he to stay behind the school gates?

Connie didn’t look up when he left, his nose buried in a sewing pattern book given to him in lieu of payment by the cabaret girls. All he called out in place of a goodbye was, “If you go past La Rochelle get me one of those pastries that look like pigs’ tails.”

Jean was tempted to ask him what sort of money Connie thought he had. Instead he muttered, “alright,” and shut their door with a gentle kick for good measure.

It wasn’t raining, for once. The sun was a meek, watered down thing in the sky, barely touching the streets with a semblance of warmth. Jean felt a freshness more than a heat bear down on him, but as he turned out of the considerably quiet district he hadn’t really wandered from since he checked in at Sawney and Bean, a new sort of weight fell on his shoulders. There were signs _everywhere._ There were people _everywhere._ Since when had there been so many people? He clutched his satchel close to his body, trying in a manic rush to translate the signs with nothing but his novice grade level of French. Needless to say, nothing about asking for the milk was able to help him with a sign proclaiming a street name he could barely pronounce. He huffed. Perhaps the playground was best left to the big kids.

Despite his desire to prove a charcoal artist wrong, Jean chickened out of going out of his comfort zone completely. He instead followed the signs for the Arc de Triomphe and tried his best to keep up with the flow of businessmen, locals and hapless tourists. He realised soon enough that if he walked with purpose and looked mildly annoyed at everyone around him, the locals accepted him into their fold and the mystified tourists jumped out of his way at the slightest clearing of his throat. It was just as well; following the signs meant that the crowds grew thicker until Jean felt like he was trying to walk through cloud. He remembered pushing through the crowd like this when he’d first touched down in Paris; it had been a similar kind of day too, come to think of it, though he’d been optimistic about the sun even being in the sky instead of grumbling about how weak it was now. The other difference was a significant lack of laughter and excited chatter in his ear, and the absence of a hand tightly clutched in his own.

Jean turned right, away from the mass of people, before the black feeling his gut rose up to bite. No Arc de Triomphe today. He instead moved down a sidestreet, careful to step over someone trying to sell bootleg watches and almost falling into a disgruntled old man in the process. “J-Je suis desole!” he called after the retreating back, though it grumbled and refused to acknowledge the apology anyway. Jean rolled his eyes and walked on, clutching his bag close to him. Like any city, Paris’s sidestreets and alleys were its veins and arteries, pumping people around its beating heart like small, brightly coloured cells. Jean liked to stick to sidestreets. He remembered the gentle scolding he used to get, how he’d be told that sticking to the beaten path was sometimes a lot better than getting cornered by some weirdo in a dark corner, but that threatened the black-gut feeling again and that was best left as repressed and ignored as he could possibly make it.

The road eventually spat him out, bizarrely, halfway along the Champs-Élysées. Blinking, Jean tried to sort out his inner road map, that had momentarily scrambled itself, before he started walking with the same ‘I know where I’m going so don’t you dare ask me directions’ stride he’d perfected before. The wonderful thing about capital cities was that, nine times out of ten, you were ignored even if you were on fire, and Jean liked it that way.

After a few more strange turnings and endless rambles, he finally turned up at-

“Damnit!” he was back where he’d started. Jean ran a hand through his hair and debated on spending the measly amount of funds he had on a map – admittedly, that would have been a good investment the day he’d gotten to Paris – when he sensed someone sidling up to him.

He tensed.

This was out of his territory. He felt safe and contained by the hostel; out here, in Tourist Town, he had to admit that literally anyone could be wandering around. He rolled his eyes and tried to adopt an abrasive sort of coolness, despite the way doubt was twisting and turning inside him. When no one spoke, he braced himself. Tourist. It had to be. They were trying to work up the courage to try out some French, and they would be hopelessly disappointed with his half-English response. It had to be directions. That, or Jean was going to have to get ready to bolt from a strange proposition – it wouldn’t, after all, be the first time it had happened. He opened his mouth and opted for the confused fellow tourist approach, when he took note of the distressed jeans and moth-eaten shoes that appeared in the corner of his vision. He’d been staring at the floor in the hope whoever it was would go away – at that, his head jerked up.

Marco, the person he’d been lowkey wanting to bump into all week, had materialised out of the cracks in the pavement like his chalk drawings, and now he was smiling at him. “You look lost, ‘Emingway.”

All innocent confusion melted away. Jean let his expression slacken into a scowl. “I’m not lost.”

“You have the look of a man who is very much lost.” Marco’s smile broadened, but before Jean could bite back with a retort of some kind, he added, “it is very nice to see you again. It appears we are making a habit of this, no?”

Jean kept the scowl; it fitted him rather nicely at the moment. “I guess so.”

Marco seemed unperturbed; his gaze swept up the road, picking out cameras and lanyards from tour guides and visitors. “This… it is a good place to get lost.”

Jean gave him a sidelong glance, frowning. In the middle of the shifting, restless crowd, Marco somehow managed to stand out, despite his dark clothes and shapeless mop of hair. He was, in a sense, a dark freckled blot on a page that had already been written on; so why did his eyes keep getting drawn to it? Jean didn’t get it.

Oh shit. He hadn’t responded. He was staring. He’d taken too long. Shit shit shit.

Marco offered him a gentler brand of smile that felt like a particularly thoughtful gift, and all of a sudden frowning felt very out of place. “Would you like to be, uh, un-lost?” he asked, and there was something to his smile that suggested to Jean he wasn’t being mocked.

He blinked at him. “Uh, what do you have in mind?”

Marco shrugged. “If you are looking for sights, I know a few places. They have been standing for many years.” Something ignited in his burnt sienna eyes as he added, “places where the authors and the artists go to drink and write and play. Like your ‘Emingway.”

Jean was sure he wasn’t meant to let a spark of excitement ignite in him at the very suggestion, but under Marco’s expectant gaze he wasn’t quite able to stop the spark mutiny into a smile. “Sounds good. Lead on.”

Marco gave a theatrical bow that made Jean snort and presented the road leading away from the Arc de Triomphe sign with an artistic flourish. “Nerd,” Jean muttered, still grinning a he set off down the intended path.

Marco walked leisurely alongside him, his loping gait reminding Jean of a great mountain dog. Yet he weaved through the crowd like a wraith, every move practiced from months or maybe even years living in the city. Jean had been under the impression that he knew how Paris ticked; he knew the main roads and the life around the hostel, and on the odd occasion stumbled blindly out into the centre on a whim thanks to sarky chalk artists. Sure, he might have known where the city’s heart was – but Marco? Marco knew its soul.

The aforementioned artist turned down one of the side streets without warning, and Jean almost didn’t notice. In fact, he was close to walking right on past – but a finger, hooked in his collar, pulled him back. “This way, ‘Emingway,” Marco crowed, and as they fell into step together once more he added, “No wonder you get lost. You are in your own planet, no?”

Jean wanted to correct him, but didn’t have the heart to. “Sorry, I was just… just thinking…”

“What about?”

“You.” The word came bumbling out of Jean’s mouth before he had time to censor it. “Shit, uh, I mean…”

“’Emingway,” Marco said, his voice deepening under the weight of flattery. “I am honoured to be in your thoughts.”

“Not like that!” Jean flushed. “I was thinking about how you keep – I mean, we keep bumping into each other.”

Marco’s smile faltered. “I am not following you.”

“Oh, no of course not, I just…” Jean sighed. “Look, I’m a cynical bastard but I also think things happen for a reason. Call it the poet in me, or something. I don’t meet people twice, it’s like lightning that way.” Marco frowned slightly, mulling the words around in his head before giving a small nod. Jean wasn’t sure if he really understood, and was just nodding to be polite, but ploughed on regardless. “I don’t really meet anyone. I have friends at the hostel but… friends don’t come easily to me.”

This Marco understood; his nod was far more pronounced and his smile appeared again. “Well,” he said, his eyes cast to the floor as they walked, “I think it was very nice to meet you that day. It has been nice to meet you all days. If we be, uh, pushed together by something, then that is okay?”

“Yes,” Jean replied, almost too quickly to be casual. “Yes, it’s okay.”

“We might be friends?”

Jean grinned to himself. “We might be friends, yeah.”

Marco beamed. “Good. And I think that it is also good to meet other people and make friends, even if you are here to write your book.”

Jean was about to tell him that no, that wasn’t the reason he’d come to Paris, but he quickly shut his mouth. Nope. That was too much overshare for one day. “Haven’t been doing much writing,” he admitted instead.

“Ah yes, you are still stuck.” Marco grinned. “Well then, you have not been doing enough seeing.”

Jean couldn’t exactly argue with that.

Marco’s pace picked up as they turned out of one alley and straight into another, their footsteps echoing off the walls either side of them. There was nothing that exciting so far – just brickwork and damp. Marco’s step faltered as they neared the end of the alley, his brow furrowed in thought, before he started walking even faster. Jean had to jog to keep up. “Why the rush?” he asked.

“We are close!” was Marco’s reply.

The alley had brought them out on a relatively normal looking street, and Jean frowned at just how normal it was. Shoppers passed them without a glance, shuffling home like turtles, and even the pigeons that were dutifully searching out something edible in the flotsam and jetsam of the pavement didn’t even look up on Marco’s approach. The shops that lined this street were smaller too, their store fronts far more modest than their multi story cousins on the Champs-Elysees. Jean couldn’t imagine something that the Lost Generation had frequented making this sort of street its home. Still, he looked for a bar or café along the street, something that looked like it had withstood the Blitz and come out bruised. He saw nothing.

Marco stopped three quarters of the way down the street, again without warning. A few of the shoppers turned their heads in silent judgement as Jean succeeded in walking into the back of him. “Oof, careful ‘Emingway! We are here.”

Jean plucked himself free of Marco’s threadbare jacket and looked.

Marco had stopped in front of something that was very clearly a laundrette, his hands in his pockets and looking very pleased with himself. For the first time, Jean began to seriously contemplate the idea that this chalk artist he’d only met three times was mad. “Uh...”

“This,” Marco patted the brickwork fondly, “is La Vie au Lait.”

Okay, he was definitely mad. Time to run damage control and back off slowly. “It’s… uh, it’s a laundrette,” Jean said, as carefully as possible.

Marco chuckled quietly at his comment and replied, somewhat enigmatically, “But you are not looking hard enough.”

Jean raised a brow. It wasn’t like the place could be mistaken for anything else, no matter how dilapidated it was. The owners had the lights on to compensate for the darkening weather outside, but the too-bright glow of the white light from cheap industrial bulbs just made the whole place, washers and all, look eerie. It was a place, Jean figured, that captured time that didn’t want to be given away. Only one patron was currently inside, which happened to be an old lady. She was shuffling around like a small dormouse, pulling her various cardigans and scarves out of a washing machine bit by agonising bit. It was like watching someone wind up a cotton reel. It was a far cry from the rowdy, bustling café that Marco promised him.

But Marco didn’t seem disappointed at all; he was actually smiling at the laundrette with an air of love to his gaze, like it was an old friend he’d happened to stumble upon. He even sighed wistfully, drifting his sights back to Jean with a soft expression. “You still are not looking.”

_Well_ , Jean thought, _the ‘stark raving bonkers’ hypothesis still stood._

“What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Look at the door,” Marco instructed. “Focus.”

Jean squinted. He didn’t know why he was trying – what on earth was going to happen if he simply _looked harder_? He heard another indulgent chuckle from Marco, and he rolled his eyes. “If this is some sort of stupid joke-”

“I am sorry, it is not a joke, I am just… I am sorry, you look so confused. Like a lamb.”

“I am not conf-!” Jean stopped talking. Because all of a sudden, yes he was very confused. More confused than he’d been in a long time.

Because he had just seen the door change.

It was like an optical illusion, when the brain suddenly changes its perception and sees something completely different. The doorway was now wider, with doors gilded gold and firmly shut from the cold threatening to sneak in and bite. Jean blinked again and saw the peeling paintwork of the laundrette – had it always been red? – become crisp and fresh. He shook his head in an effort to clear it, wondering if his imagination was simply running away with him – but then he heard the music. Saxophone. Trumpet. Piano.

Jazz?

“It does not look like much upon first sighting,” Marco was saying, his voice oddly far away, “but it is quite the place. Busy every night, with music and laughter and lo-”

“I can see it”, Jean answered.

Because he _could._

The laundrette was completely gone now, swallowed by the illusion, along with its tower of washing machines and dryers and the little old lady. The place really was painted red, a band really was playing. And then Jean began to see shapes, large shadows flickering and twisting and… turning into the faded outlines of people. A group was sat next to a table facing out onto the street, their laughter filtering out of the gaps under the door in a quiet roar. If Jean squinted he could see tables, full tables, and could snatch the glimmer of falling champagne into glasses and beads on the women’s dresses, twinkling like small planets behind the frosted glass of the windows. And someone, somewhere, was beginning a piano solo.

Jean’s head spun. This… this was not normal. There was life behind the glass, life that hadn’t been there before. He sensed Marco standing beside him, looking at the same strange scene laid out before them. Jean blinked furiously, wondering if it was some sort of joint hallucination. “I don’t… is this real?” he asked.

“It was real,” Marco said. “Once.”

Jean didn’t answer. The voices were growing louder, becoming more coherent. People were speaking French in rapid succession, others just shouting obscenely in bright American accents, and he swore he heard the name, “Ernest”, shouted in such a scolding way he felt tempted to step back. He shook his head. The laundrette, he realised, was still there; it was transparent somehow, tucked underneath the café like an old projector slide. The café boomed, whilst the laundrette merely whispered. “How did you find this?” Jean whispered.

Marco didn’t answer immediately. When he did, it was closer and quietly reassuring. “You really see?” he asked instead.

Jean nodded dumbly. “I see.” He watched the people inside flutter and dance under the jazz beat like mayflies, doomed to vanishing too soon, and he knew his jaw had dropped but he couldn’t find the attention span to shut it again. How long he stood there, he didn’t know; he was enraptured by it all, the phantoms that looked and sounded so real and the sound of applause after a finished set. He could even smell cigarette smoke that he could see wafting from the open windows like ghostly, pale fingers reaching up to the sky.

But then, as the applause died away for the musicians, the image too began to fade. The chatter began to quieten to a small, whirring calm that Jean realised quickly was the sound of the washing machines beginning a cycle. As quickly as it appeared to him, the café melted away again in a carousel of colour and sound, until the chipped white paintwork bled through the red like the inverse of a bloodstain and the only person inside the building was the small old woman. She was looking furiously at them now, the glasses perched on her nose magnifying her milky eyes.

Jean dropped his gaze in embarrassment, but Marco just laughed. “She wonders why we are looking,” he said.

“Honestly? I’m wondering the same thing.” Jean glanced to Marco, expecting an answer, but Marco was still watching the laundrette, as though hoping for another song to start up and the image to play again. “Were those ghosts? What we just saw?”

Marco tilted his head to one side and then the other, as if trying to weigh up Jean’s words in his head. “Of a kind,” he answered.

“What do you mean?”

Marco tore his gaze away from the building to land them on Jean. “I think… it is a window.”

Jean frowned. “A window?”

“Yes. This city, I was not lying when I said it has a life to it. And it is not like the pages of a book, ‘Emingway. It is not the sort of city to be read.” He smiled. “There are places to be lost here, but plenty to be found also.”

Jean wasn’t sure he understood. Glancing back to the laundrette, there was nothing fading or merging now. It was something normal again. Something forgettable. Jean turned back to Marco, and he was steady too. Stable. He wasn’t flickering in and out of focus, or threatening to vanish. Jean found his breath again, and tucked his own hands in his pockets.

A window.

He mulled the thought around in his mind, even when Marco jerked his head to the road and set off walking again. Had he just imagined it? Had he gotten caught up in the idea of something being there so much that his imagination had taken the reins over logic and showed him something that wasn’t there in the first place? Somehow, he knew that wasn’t true.

Marco hummed something under his breath as they walked, and it took Jean a while to realise that it was the tune that the jazz band had been playing. It was kind of catchy; Jean wondered if it was a popular song, and whether he could find it anywhere. Then again, no recording could replicate something that was played in front of his own eyes, however it had happened.

As they turned a corner and Jean recognised a street that led directly back to the hostel, he asked, “How often have you seen it do that?”

“Mm?”

“The café.”

Marco popped his lips. “Oh, a few times. Sometimes I stand for a long time and nothing comes. Some days, the people do not want to play.”

“Have you ever gone inside?”

Marco didn’t frown often, Jean had noticed. It was almost as though it was a foreign language to him, the art of looking anything less than content. Now was a time for a frown, and it almost hurt Jean to see it cross the other’s face. “I have never gone to the door,” Marco said, after a moment of walking in silence.

“Why?”

“Because it is not allowed. It is only good to observe.”

Jean didn’t respond to that. There was something sad in the way Marco said it, like he wished he would be able to step through that door and immerse himself in the people and the music and the smoke. Watching was only good enough for so long; soon, he would begin to feel left out.

The roads began to narrow and look more familiar to Jean’s eyes, and soon enough the hostel was upon them in all its battered, downtrodden glory. “Here’s me,” Jean joked lamely. He paused. “And you, actually.”

Marco laughed. “Yes, and me also.” He checked his watch and gave a theatrical sigh. “But, duty calls. I have to work.”

Marco had never mentioned work before. “Where do you work?”

“I am just helping out a friend right now.” Marco shrugged. “It is a small job. Very boring. But it pays.”

“Wow, lucky you.”

“It is not so lucky, I do not think.”

They stood for a moment, unsure of what to do. Jean felt like a girl who’d just been dropped home by a boy her parents wouldn’t approve of. He scuffed his shoes with a bite of his lip. “I had fun today. Thanks for showing me the café. It was weird, and I think I’m gonna have dreams about it, but it was fun.”

Marco beamed. “You are welcome. I am sorry I have to leave, or I would walk you to your door like in the movies.” He winked – actually _winked_ – and Jean thanked his lucky stars that the streetlight that usually stood above them had blown out the previous night. Still, the burning of his cheeks wasn’t something he could ignore.

“Yeah, w-well…I’ll see you around?”

Marco nodded. “See you around.”

Jean gave a small smile and began to walk towards the main door.

“’Emingway!” Marco called back.

Jean turned.

“You know what you were saying, about lightning striking twice?” Marco shuffled his weight and offered a bashful, conscious smile in his direction. It wasn’t a brand of smile Jean had seen on him before. “I am glad that it strikes a lot for us. I would rather be in a storm than in a drought.”

Jean opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and then walked straight into the door. Marco’s gentle laughter rang in his ears, even after he’d climbed the stairs to his room and flung his bag to one side. His head smarted from the force of the hit, but when he felt the tender skin there was no swelling. Good. He didn’t need another war wound from doing something incredibly stupid.

Connie wasn’t there, which was an oddity, but Jean appreciated being alone. Shutting the door muffled the baying noise of drunks and parties going on up and down the floor, and as he crossed to the window he could see Marco’s shadow slipping around a corner like an alleycat. Had he waited until he thought Jean was in his room before leaving? The small flutter of warmth that started in Jean’s stomach seemed to intermingle with the tickle from earlier until he was grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. Or, potentially, a madman. Which, considering what he had seen, might not have been far off the truth. But, God, what on earth was going on in the city that Marco seemed so adamant to keep secret, or vague? The questions he’d had about the strange artist before had now only tripled in their number; not only was there the normal sorts of mystery, but now there was – what, magic? Was that what it was? Or was it ghosts, or time travel, or some other strange phenomena?

One thing was for sure; there was definitely more than charcoal to Marco.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another (super late) update for this AU for the wonderful Lucy. It is...definitely not April, for that I apologise, but I'm only two months late...oops...  
> In this chapter, Jean meets someone new, has some bonding time with the two people he swears he's not friends with, and conducts the mildest of breaking and entering.   
> The plot, as it happens, also thickens. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and as always I can be found on tumblr or twitter if you would like to ask me anything about this AU or any other projects I have going on! :)

It rained again the next morning. It started off sickly, fine enough that it might have conceded its efforts to the cloud instead, and kept the streets dry. But then the downpour came, and anyone who didn’t have a reason to go outside made the most of the great indoors. The travellers’ feet itched, the businesses breathed a sigh of relief for a quiet day and the commuters grumbled and groaned about it all. Jean, however, was glad of the excuse to stay cooped up.

He had opted to throw his moth-eaten bedsheets over his head to keep out the sound of the torrential, roaring monster that rattled his window frame and pounded the glass, and was quite happy to stay there for the rest of the day. The storm was so fierce, he mused as he lay there, that it felt as though the city was trying to wash away the evening he’d had with Marco. If he blinked too slowly, he could feel the memory of it fading too, trickling down into the storm drain of his mind like a collection of cigarette butts and bottle caps.

He poked his head out of his sheets to check the time on Connie’s one-armed clock (it was always fun trying to guess exactly what time it was when there was nothing but a stump left of the hour hand) and found the room empty. That had to mean it was late. He had an interview that afternoon; Sasha had put in a good word for him at the little bakery she knew, and Jean didn’t have the energy to reject her offer. It wasn’t exactly what he was after, but if a small bakery job kept him in the greens for a little while, there couldn’t be any harm in it. Plus, they were used to taking on students and backpackers that quit within a days’ notice. Jean didn’t have much reason not to go for it, save for his stupid pride – and pride was not, as Sasha pointed out, a good reason to turn down a modestly paid job. He debated on skipping out on it for only the briefest of moments, as Sasha would definitely find out if he did. And then, Sasha was likely to kick his ass.

When he sat up, he frowned at the considerable lack of a Connie at the desk, working on his photographs. He was out in this weather? Connie, he remembered, was one of the special people who actually enjoyed random bouts of wild weather; he was likely out with his camera capturing ‘mood shots’ of the irritable people unlucky enough to be out in the maelstrom. Jean crossed to the window and looked out at the world outside, blurred by the rain and in a pearly wash from the weakening sun. There was an ethereal quality to it; the flagstones shone like semi-precious stones, and umbrellas twirled about like kites and Catherine wheels in the wind. _God,_ Jean thought as he leant closer, _it was this sort of weather that inspired poets._ It made the impossible possible – and tired laundrettes into smoky French cafés, apparently.

The typewriter still lay on the desk, the piece of paper Jean had shoved into it last night lolling out like a tongue. It was thick with words. Not much of it made sense, as it was written down in the midst of Marco’s departure under the street lights in a mad rush. That night, Jean had needed to write it all down, needed it as precise as he could make it, as he knew he wouldn’t believe it when he woke up. True enough, this morning’s Jean Kirschtein was a cynical bastard, and as he squinted at the paper on the typewriter and pulled it loose, that germ of doubt began to grow.

It was the scribbling of a madman, he decided with a sinking heart. There was no metaphor in the ant trails of text, no attempt to neaten the narrative either. It was just a mess. Jean groaned, and slumped back against the desk. He hated this part; the part when he realises the Magnum Opus is nothing but a list of white noise. But, he considered, it was written frankly, wildly, and that alone made it clear that whatever he’d experienced with Marco was no fantasy. It was enough, at least, for him to believe, if no one else. Because no, he couldn’t stop thinking about that place. And yes, he was definitely going to ask Marco if they could go back and see it again. The very thought made his chest light with hope.

Maybe he could work around the mess on the page; perhaps, if he was in a particularly enlightened mood, he could edit it and make it something that fit together neatly, and sounded like a narrative.

A knock at the door roused him from the desk. There had been knocks earlier, but everyone who truly knew Jean also knew not to bother calling for him until after nine unless they had a death wish. As a result, Jean had not opened the door. Now, as he glanced at the clock, he knew he had no choice. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see the rugby player stood in the hallway, arms folded and eyes cast down. Waiting for him. Well, that was a little unsettling.

Jean squinted. “Can I help you?”

The man blinked, and focused his attention on Jean. “Oh, uh, hi.” His voice was accented, Jean noticed, a gravelly sort of husk that made him seem far older than he was.

Jean squinted further. “Hello.” He tried to think back to the last time he’d met him. “You’re… Reiner, right?”

He’d heard Eren call him the Rugger Bugger the other night, and he desperately had to stop himself from using it as his actual name.

The man nodded. He was a far cry from most other hostel-goers; he looked as though he ate well, for starters. “Uh, I wouldn’t usually ask but…d’you happen to have any paper lying about? I spoke to the guy just down the hall and he said you’d be better off asking, if you weren’t… uh… balls-deep in prose.”

‘The guy down the hall’. God, he was going to kill Eren. He opened his door a little wider to accommodate the man inside. “Come on in. I’ll see if I can find some.”

Rugger Bugger – Reiner, his name was Reiner – grinned and shouldered his way in, heaving himself into Jean’s space like a large animal. Jean was briefly reminded of Marco, but the similarities stopped there. There was something unbelievably _solid_ about Reiner, something that Marco decidedly lacked.

Reiner took in the room with a small smile. “You keep things tidy in here.”

Jean snorted. “You should see it when my roommate’s home, it’s like an entire burlesque show exploded in here.”

He kept the door open (always good to have an escape route when a stranger is snooping around your room) and rifled through the piles of paper on the desk. Most of them were printed on, feeble attempts at writing spat onto the page from his typewriter. The typewriter was one of the things Reiner seemed interested in; he was leaning over to look at it, which meant he was getting extremely close to Jean. Jean was an avid believer in personal space, but it looked like this guy might have only ever read it in a book once. Jean raised his brow as the giant loomed over him. “Could you give me some room there, man?”

Reiner blinked. “Sorry.” He backed off, though his eyes were still very much on the typewriter. “Where did you get a thing like that?”

Jean carried on searching, his ‘fuck off’ meter slowly depleting in the space between them. “Junk sale. One of the flea markets in Montreuil, the guy said it would never get working again. But it only needed a bit of tinkering.”

“You fixed it?”

Jean shrugged, still sifting through his papers. “I got it working, but I don’t think I fixed it properly. Still jams sometimes.” Curiosity prickled at the corners of his common sense as Reiner went back to admiring his room. That was the only way to describe what he was doing; he cast an eye over everything, the posters Connie had stuck up from the shows he’d saved from disaster thanks to his sewing, a few moody looking photographs he’d tried to sell to moody looking locals, and-

“You are rooming with a girl?”

Jean span around. Reiner had a photograph in his hands, creased and crumpled and very obviously thrown away. As Jean stared, he flipped the photo around to show a picture of two people in the middle of a main square someplace in Calais. One was unmistakeably Jean, though he was smiling in the photo and his hair was a little shorter. The other person…

Jean snatched it out of Reiner’s hands. “That’s private.”

“She is not your roommate?”

Jean crumpled the photo in his hand and strode to the desk, and the wastepaper basket shoved under there. “No,” he said, tossing it inside, “she’s not my roommate.”

Reiner, thankfully, seemed to understand that he’d hit a nerve. “I am sorry,” he began, “I did not mean to pry-”

“Sure. But you’re quite happy to look through my shit when my back’s turned.” Jean wished he sounded more concerned. He wished that the anger would rise up, would crackle and spit at this stranger and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. He even wished to feel just a little bit sad about it. But there was nothing – just a dead tone and a numb feeling settled in his chest. He sighed and turned back to the desk. “Just… stop snooping, alright? I’ll find you some paper.”

There resumed a bout of silence then, as Jean searched and Reiner stood. It was a little awkward, but Jean figured it was worth it to stem the flow of conversation. Maybe this was why he didn’t make friends that often – he couldn’t bring himself to interact with people when he was trying to get into the very important mood of moping. “Here,” he said finally, thrusting three pages at Reiner’s chest. “One’s clean, the other two are written on but it’s not much and it’s horseshit anyway.”

Reiner took the pages and couldn’t stop himself from turning them over to read them. Jean huffed. He should’ve known. He awaited the verdict with a mixture of resignation and intrigue.

“These are good.” He looked up. “Are you a writer?”

Jean leant back on the desk, though it creaked in a worrying way, and folded his arms. “Trying to be,” he answered.

“You’re succeeding.”

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere, big guy.”

Reiner grinned. “You know, Bertholdt is an artist.”

Jean blinked. Ah, Bertholdt. He remembered the name – the horsey guy with the grace of a giraffe and the pores of Niagara falls. “Really?”

Reiner nodded, a smile spreading across his face. Jean had a feeling that Bertholdt was a favourite topic of discussion for him. “He’s been commissioned for graphic novels back home. Comics, you know?” Jean nodded. He knew. “Anyway, he likes to keep in practice. This trip is… something of a career make-or-break for him.”

“How so?”

Reiner’s expression changed. The smile went away. Jean realised he wanted it back. “He lost his steady gig, back home. The company went bust. Had to let all the concept artists go. Bertholdt was storyboards and clean-up, but there were too many. He didn’t make the cut.” Reiner shrugged. “Knocked his confidence for six, he didn’t feel like getting back on the horse for a long time. He suggested this trip to see if something could kickstart his… well I guess you’d call it his mojo.” Reiner laughed, but there was no humour in it. “It didn’t happen for the first few places, but when we reached Paris something just hit him like a truck. Can’t get enough paper!” He smiled, waving the pages in Jean’s face. “Hence my mission.”

Jean couldn’t help it. He laughed. The thought of Bertholdt sweating it out over a piece of paper was so close to himself it was uncanny. “Well, a friend of mine once said that Paris is a place you need to experience,” he said, remembering Marco’s words from yesterday. “You need to go back to when the artists made this place their home.”

Reiner grinned. “You got a time machine in this place?”

Jean thought back to the café, the jazz, the ‘window’, and shook his head. “No,” he said, smiling, “not in here I don’t.”

* * *

Jean went to the interview. It consisted of being asked, in broken English, whether he knew how to make coffee and how to make tea without messing it up. They then asked about his availability and said they would get in touch. Jean stepped out of the café and into the rain in a more optimistic mood than he’d expected. It wasn’t a writing job, but it was something – if he got it, of course.

He brought his jacket up around his head to stave off the onslaught of rain, and jogged through the empty streets. Paris had a way of dimming everything’s colour scheme to match the bruised sky above it, and as Jean ran he felt very much like he had stepped into Picasso’s early blue phase.

He wondered if Marco had gotten home safe from the job he said he had to do. He wondered if Marco was trying to work somewhere sheltered today, out of the rain but also out of sight of tips and people. He wondered why he was wondering about Marco.

He got back to the hostel in record time, throwing himself against the doors before the rain turned to an unforgiving hail, and did the right thing of shaking off his jacket in the foyer before heading past the stairs and to the room behind. It had once been something of a social room, with a football table that had lost some of its men and a television that only showed French programs from the 1960s. The same French program from the 1960s. On repeat. With static. Its saving grace however was a set of three moth-eaten sofas and a few comfy looking beanbag chairs that looked like they had been plucked from the 70s with little mercy.

Eren and Armin had already taken one sofa, perched either end of it like a pair of bizarre bookends, and as Jean entered Armin gave a little wave. Eren was flicking through what looked to be a script, whilst Armin had a book on whales trapped between his arm and the sofa. “So, how’d it go?” they asked as Jean made a beeline, quite correctly, for the beanbag chairs.

Jean slumped down into the nearest beanbag and sighed. “Think I might have a job soon.”

“That’s great!”

“Yeah, fantastic.” Jean tilted himself back so he was able to stare up at the ceiling. “Jean Kirschtein, Makes Coffee in French Capital. Not quite the same as ‘Published Writer’ is it?”

Armin rolled onto their stomach to frown at him. “Come on, it’s not that bad.”

“Yeah Jean, you could be reading a script in a language you don’t recognise despite telling the casting director you were fluent,” Eren muttered.

Armin cast him a severe look. “I told you lying on your application wasn’t a good idea. Now you have to face the music.”

Eren huffed. “Look, how was I to know that Old French and French aren’t the same thing?”

Armin gave Jean a pained look. Being Armin had to be exhausting.

“So, Hemingway,” Eren said, propping his feet up on the wobbly table, “what are your plans for the rest of this disastrous day?”

Jean paused. “Well, Connie leant me his copy of _On The Road_ so…”

Eren mimicked the sound of a gameshow buzzer. “Incorrect, you are joining us on a star-studded tour around this glorious city.”

“He means you’re coming with us on a bus tour so he can crash it,” Armin explained. “The tour,” they said afterwards, hastily, “not the bus.”

Jean blinked. “And why would I be doing that?”

Eren rolled his eyes. “Because it’s _fun,_ idiot.”

Jean had the idea that Eren’s sort of fun probably involved a lot of teenage stupidity, but he rolled with it. “Why are you ruining someone’s tour?”

“The bastard who guides the tour stole my gig,” Eren huffed.

Armin sighed. “Shocking, isn’t it? A French person, who speaks French, steals a French role in a French film from our own nearest and dearest.” They tutted theatrically. “The indignity.”

Eren aimed a kick at Armin but graciously missed. “Look, I had that role in the bag! You know I did! I knew enough French to blag it!”

“The point is-” Armin cut in before Eren switched to full-blown rant mode, “- we want to get out of here for a little while, the rain is driving us crazy and I bet it’s doing the same to you.”

Jean sniffed. “I could be writing.” Armin gave him a softly sardonic look that he didn’t appreciate. “Okay, so I won’t be writing. Ever thought I might want some time to myself?”

Armin chose to ignore that, too. “I thought you’d like to come to the Louvre or something. You mentioned at breakfast how you’ve wanted to go back for a while. Why not today?”

Jean gritted his teeth. Damnit. He’d forgotten that Armin actually listened to people – and remembered things. He thought back to That First Time, when he had wandered the halls of the art gallery with an arm instead of a satchel slung around his shoulder. Her laughter as she pointed out the nudes and the faces some of the paintings pulled. His wish, small though it was, that she would just stop laughing at everything.

He shook himself. He’d not thought of anything _bad_ about her before. It was a new feeling, and not quite as sore as the good ones. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he tried.

“Oh, come on,” Eren complained, throwing his hands in the air, “you can’t just not go to the places you went to with _her_.” He spat the word out like it was a nasty taste in his mouth. “No wonder you don’t ever want to do anything.”

Though Jean felt the all-too-familiar defence rise up to snap, he knew Eren was right.

That was why, an hour later, he was sneaking onto a tour bus with Eren and Armin. How Eren had somehow caught the bus that was not only busy, despite the rain and the mist, but the one that his rival was captaining, Jean couldn’t figure out. It was like the guy had a brand of luck reserved only for the absolute pettiest of things. Still, Jean couldn’t quite dislodge the slightest of schoolboy giddiness he felt for doing something wrong, and he caught himself almost smiling as they slipped on amongst a throng of Spanish tourists. The driver didn’t even look them over; it didn’t seem as though he was paid enough to care.

They chose seats at the back – all the better to complete the schoolboy cliché, of course – but once they were settled and the bus began to move, Jean actually began to pay attention to the city that rumbled by in a cough and a choke of fumes. He’d not been able to afford public transport for a long time, and he wasn’t enough of a criminal to dodge the fares (he, unfortunately, had an annoyingly acute moral compass) so it was good to rely on something else besides his own two feet for a while. He even began to relax.

He had always found being a tourist an awkward, embarrassing thing. It felt like being in a sort of limbo, stuck between being a local and being a stranger. It felt like, instead of being in a liminal space, you _were_ the liminal space. It was a sense of not really belonging, and Jean had far too much of _that_ feeling in his life already. Jean liked to move around places, move around Paris, like a local; he wanted to experience things that weren’t quite so signposted so he immerse himself and dive down deep, instead of just sitting at the city’s edge and dipping his toes in. He curled himself up against the side of the bus, tapping out a beat on the railings beside him, and tried to ignore the feeling of being slowly doused in water by the mist hanging around them.

Because, of course, Eren Jaeger had chosen the bus that was open-top. Figured.

The whole tour was, unsurprisingly, not in English, which appeared to rub more salt into Eren’s wounds. “Don’t even know when I can heckle the bastard,” he muttered. “And I didn’t bring anything to throw, _damnit._ ” He paused. “This isn’t even in _French_ , what is this guy speaking?” 

Armin just smiled. “Spanish,” he answered gently.

Eren huffed, and drew his coat tighter around his body. “Whatever. We’ll get off the bus with Hemingway, this was a terrible revenge plan.”

“Some would say it wasn’t even a plan at all.”

“Shut up, Armin.”

“I’m just saying, if you wanted to go out because you were bitter that you have to learn Old French and you were bored you only had to say so…”

“ _Armin.”_

Jean recognised the Louvre stop before Eren and Armin did, though he was pretty sure they were too busy arguing to take much notice. As they all shuffled off the bus, the worst thing Eren did was fix their bright-eyed tour guide with a sharp glare. Jean stifled a snigger when the guide gave a mildly confused smile and wished them a pleasant trip in Spanish, and Eren just stormed off like he’d been deeply insulted. No matter how many parts Eren tried to play, being a spiteful bastard for no reason definitely wasn’t any of them. He was, Jean realised with a grimace, too _nice_ for that – though he would have never considered using that particular adjective for Eren.

In the rain and the fog, Paris was an ethereal creature. The Louvre, Jean decided as they crossed the road to its entrance, wasn’t a creature exactly – but it had the flavour of ghosts about it. The tourists brave enough to venture out were nothing but shadows, and the sound of musicians in the square seemed to come from invisible instruments. It was more than a little eerie, but it sent something sparking in Jean’s mind all the same.

An arm was suddenly linked around his, and for a minute he thought he’d manage to travel back to That First Time, but when he was jerked rather impolitely forwards, the memory died. “Come on!” Eren was saying, tugging his arm again for effect, “Let’s go bother a mime into talking!”

“However exciting mime-bothering is,” Jean said, trying in vain to extricate himself from Eren’s surprisingly tight grip, “I was thinking more along the lines of visiting the galler- oof!”

In his attempts to free himself, he’d managed to skitter backwards – straight into someone very solid, apparently. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately, turning to face the poor tourist he’d tried to step on. “I didn’t mean-”

“We must stop meeting like this, ‘Emingway. The people will talk.”

Marco.

Jean stumbled back, suddenly free and clutching his satchel strap so tightly he hoped it would stop the tips of his ears flushing red. He failed miserably. Marco was wearing his glasses today; they covered what seemed like a quarter of his face and were the same sort of colour and design that only tended to be seen in sepia photographs. Still, he suited them somehow. Despite the cold, he had no jacket or jumper to be seen, and his sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. His hands, snatched back before they could touch Jean, were covered in black dust. It was a knee jerk reaction for Jean to smile, but when he did it didn’t feel quite so painful as it usually did. Perhaps it was Marco. He hoped it wasn’t. “ _You’re_ the one who keeps bumping into _me_ ,” he corrected.

Marco gave a helpless shrug. “I suppose the lightning struck again.”

Jean felt the tips of his ears start to burn, and he ducked his head down before the blush snuck around his face. “Yeah. Lightning.”

Eren chose that moment to butt in. “Hey, Jean! You coming, Armin found some dude who’s giving rides to people in his boat!”

Jean glanced at Marco, blackened and charred at his edges with the charcoal. The smile he offered was the private one, the careful one. Jean turned back and shook his head. “Nah, I’ll stick around here a little more. Let me know when you’re going back to the hostel.”

Eren shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He made off in the direction Armin had sauntered a few moments ago, no doubt on his mime-bothering mission, and soon he was swallowed up by the mist. And then it was just the two of them. He and Marco, in a ghost town. Jean shoved his hands into his pockets and scuffed the ground with his shoes. He suddenly didn’t know what to say. Despite wanting to see Marco for the better half of the day, every attempted greeting withered and died before it could get out. He ended up just looking at him, gormless, for a second or two before Marco cleared his throat.

“You are out and about.”

Jean nodded. “Well, I’m not a hermit.”

“You are exploring.” Marco smiled. “You are exploring Paris.”

Jean sniffed, hoisting his bag up again. “Maybe a little,” he conceded.

“And what have you found so far?”

Marco seemed genuinely interested, his brows disappearing into his flyaway hair as he waited expectantly for Jean to weave him some tale of adventure. Jean sighed and shrugged. “A lot of memories,” he replied.

“And that is…not good?”

Jean frowned. He imagined Marco shorter, imagined his hair growing out longer, imagined him turning distinctly more feminine with dimples and a pointed chin and a sunny smile she used too much…

He blinked it away, and Marco came back. He sighed. “Not the sort of memories I have.”

Marco made a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat, but whatever he had brewing in his mind was quickly shelved for want of a better subject. “I am working today, but I was just taking a break. Do you want to see what I have been doing?”

Jean shifted his bag strap higher onto his shoulder and nodded. Anything to stop thinking about her. Anything at all. Marco could have suggested a leap off the highest point of the Louvre and he would have agreed to it. Instead, he just said, “Sure,” and hoped it came off as casual as he wanted it to.

Marco beamed and led him over to a small corner of the courtyard, where a small group of tourists were gasping and pointing. When Marco approached, they began to crowd around and talk excitedly to him. Jean hung back, watching as they pointed and chattered and laughed. Marco slipped into his role with modest ease, his French perfect as he responded to their praises and questions. Jean felt a little adrift in the midst of it all, and waited for the others to lose interest and move on. Marco was having none of it, however; when he noticed Jean wasn’t directly behind him, he gently nudged his way back through the small collection of people and beckoned Jean over. Jean blinked. Marco smiled.

“Come on, ‘Emingway,” he urged gently, “they will not bite.”

Jean shuffled forward, ignoring the stares sent his way from the curious tourists, but completely forgot himself when he caught a glimpse of what was on the floor. He let his jaw drop open.

Marco had drawn a black hare. The animal was locked in a startled pose as though it had sensed the people milling around the square and had moved of its own accord, ready to bound off into one of the backstreets at a moment’s notice. Jean dropped his bag and crouched down to get a closer look, reaching out a hand to hover over the picture’s surface. It looked as though he could reach out and touch the fur on its side, or the thin velour of its ears. It wasn’t done, not yet, but bit by bit it was wriggling its way out of Marco’s imagination, sketch to colour, stopping only to sniff the air. Jean hadn’t seen street art like it.

“Do you like?”

The voice, soft and lilting, was closer than Jean expected. Marco had crouched down too, and was looking at him expectantly. There wasn’t a teasing glimmer in his smile this time; it was as close to serious as Marco had gotten. The people, Jean noticed, were dispersing, knowing that now was not the time to be spectators. He was fine with that; spending time with Marco and his art was the sort of thing that felt right to be done alone. “It is not done,” Marco said after a moment, looking back to the picture. “I still need to, uh, define the back and work on the haunches. It is not quite ready to run away.”

Jean realised that his silence was probably being taken for disinterest. “It’s great,” he blurted out in a panic. Marco stared at him, the smile broadening. “Wait, uh, I can do better than that…”

“I think ‘great’ is a good word, ‘Emingway,” Marco said. “You are a fan of hares more than you are a fan of birds, no?”

Jean knew Marco was teasing him, but the flush creeping up his neck was relentless in its pursuit of his cheeks. He decided it was in his best interest not to bite. Instead, he brought his attention to the paving stones and asked, “How can you _do_ this?”

Marco blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“ _This_.” Jean gestured at the artwork. “Just… look at a pavement and see something inside it.”

“Ah, you are thinking differently. I do not see things in the concrete and the stone.” He patted his chest, the motion leaving sooty dust over his heart and scattering through the air. “I see in here. I just let it tell my hands what to do.” He laughed. “It is silly, I know.”

Jean laughed too, but only slightly. Marco was many things, but silly wasn’t one of them. He looked back at the picture and stretched an arm out over the hare’s eye. It hadn’t been filled in yet; it stared blankly up at him, nothing but a sketch but still capable of watching. “How long do these take you?” he asked.

“A few hours. Sometimes a day.” Marco leaned back on his haunches and gave a long sigh. “Today is not a good day. It is going to rain again.”

Jean followed Marco’s gaze with a flash of panic that didn’t belong to him. “Will you finish it in time?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Marco shrugged. “Sometimes I work slow.”

“What do you want me to do?” 

It was Marco’s turn to stare at him in disbelief. Jean made sure to keep his eye fixed on the drawing. He hadn’t meant to ask. It had just slipped out, fumbling on his lips like it wasn’t sure it wanted to be said. The clouds above them rumbled their disapproval, and it was then that Marco took his hand. Jean jerked a little, but didn’t pull away. Marco had a softer expression now, the face of an artist scoping out his subject. The look wasn’t fixed on Jean; it was on the hare, Marco’s eyes darting over it the same way they had with Jean in the café. Then his gaze wandered back to Jean’s hand, clenched in a fist in his surprise. Marco laughed and peeled back his fingers like the petals of a flower that wasn’t ready to bloom, placing a small black stick of chalk in his palm. “You will get messy,” he warned. “It gets everywhere.”

“I want to help,” Jean said firmly, and that was apparently all he needed to say.

He finally stopped looking at the floor when he felt Marco shift closer. Marco’s face was close, but he wasn’t paying attention to Jean at all. He was hovering his hand above the drawing, tracing imaginary chalk strokes in the air. It looked more like he was trying to conjure the animal into life, drawing it out of the stone. Jean tried not to focus on Marco’s hand, steady and calculating, but once it drew back to his side he missed it.

“Okay,” Marco said, his accent dropping deeper as he came out of the trance his artwork had put him in, “I need you to make sharp strokes,” he gestured, “here. And then I need you to blur them into the legs,” he pointed, “here.”

Jean hesitated, poising the chalk over the flagstones. The dust was already staining his hands, turning his thumb and fingers into small shadows. With an encouraging nod from Marco, he brought the chalk down on the ground and swept it down in a forceful, sharp arc. It looked rude and sharp, stuck there in the midst of all the softness, that for a juvenile moment Jean thought he’d managed to mess it up. Then Marco leaned over and smoothed those lines, smudged them into something rounded and muted. Jean watched, not understanding how nothing but Marco’s hand could turn his awkward little line into something that was the complete opposite. Marco leaned back after he was done, nodding with that small smile Jean had since recognised as a genuine one.

“Good,” he said. “Again.”

So Jean did. He forced the strokes. Marco blended them together. They worked silently, the grumbling clouds above them and the cloaking mist around them the only things that reminded Jean that they were actually outside. The people that passed them didn’t matter, nor did the cooing of more tourists that had come over to investigate. All that mattered was the dark lines, those unforgiving dark lines, and the way Marco smoothed and moulded them into something else. By the time Marco was finishing off the gleam in the hare’s eye, Jean was sure that they had created something alive between the both of them.

Marco straightened up to admire his handiwork with a bright grin. There was a conscious effort not to be boastful, but Jean could tell how proud he was. “It looks good,” he said, as if that would be enough to convince him. “It looks really good, Marco.”

Marco puffed out his chest just that little bit, enough to crack a smile across Jean’s face. “It was a joint effort, ‘Emingway,” he said, dusting his hands off on his already ruined trousers and offering him one of those grins. “Thank you.”

Jean felt that urge rise up in him to brush it off, to say that he hadn’t done anything worth thanking – but Marco’s grin stopped him in his tracks. “Uh, you’re welcome,” he said, rather lamely.

There was something about him, Jean decided when Marco turned to retrieve a camera out of his bag and speak to a gushing French lady. Something about Marco made him stand out – but not in the normal way. Whilst someone like Eren was hard to miss with his larger than life personality, Marco was something of a quiet interruption. He just seemed like the sort of person who changed a place, simply by being there.

He hadn’t noticed Marco had stopped talking until he brushed against him to get a look at the hare from another angle.  Little tingles fired up Jean’s arm traitorously. “Come,” Marco murmured, his voice dropping to little more than a hum, “it looks like it will rain soon. We should get inside.”

Jean looked up and noticed that the clouds bumbling their way through the mist looked a very threatening shade of bruised. “To the Louvre?” He looked back to the hare, the artwork they’d just managed to finish, and then down at himself. His arms, from fingertip to wrist, were mottled with black smudges and grey highlights. He grimaced. “We’re pretty filthy.”

Marco considered himself with a frown, his lower lip jutting out just a little bit as he inspected his smeared jeans and blackened wrists. “This is true.” He picked up his black coat that had been lying in a heap on the ground and shrugged it on. He glanced up at the Louvre palace-that-once-was, with its stern architecture, and gave a curious hum. “It is good that I know a different way in then, is it not?”

Jean took a moment to process that. “W-wait, what?” he asked, but Marco was already moving. He scrambled after him, leaving the hare to the sky’s mercy. “What do you mean, ‘a different way in’?”

Marco tapped the side of his nose with a knowing smile, and without warning veered off from the main entrance, past the elegant glass pyramid and towards a corner of the building. Jean gawped after him, not sure whether following this bizarre man would end in a swift arrest and deportation, but set off after him anyway. He told himself that, if he wanted, he could quite easily roll his eyes, shoulder his bag and look for Eren and Armin. The boat might not have left yet, and they could have had a wonderful time churning murky river water up and down the Seine. But as he caught Marco’s eye and saw the way they twinkled, he knew he really didn’t have a choice at all. He followed him, muttering under his breath that he was not going to land himself in prison because of that look and knowing very well it was a lie.

Marco was leaning up against the wall of the Louvre when he caught up to him, next to a door that managed to look very official and very locked. He had taken his glasses off and tucked them in his shirt pocket, and his hands remained innocently in his coat pockets. Jean’s better nature began to prickle. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked. “There are people everywhere.”

Marco shrugged. Leaning up against the wall like he was, he seemed to blend in with the building’s aesthetic in a way Jean couldn’t describe. “There are people, yes, but they do not see.” Before Jean could ask, Marco brandished something like looked uncannily like a hairpin.

Jean groaned. “You are _not_ going to try picking the lock Mystery Girls Style of one of the most famous art galleries in the world.”

“You are right. I am not going to try.” Marco winked. “I am going to succeed.”

_Well_ , Jean thought to himself, _I might as well wave goodbye to my Visa now._

Marco gestured for him to keep a lookout as he slipped next to the door and started work on it, his artist hands delicate in their task of breaking and entering as they were with his charcoals. Jean cast a look around the place, and found to his surprise that Marco was right; no one was paying them any attention. They just walked past, stuck in the little worlds inside their heads, and if anyone did happen to glance at them, their eyes slipped away like waves on rocks. Jean folded his arms and leant back on the wall, still keeping his eye on the people walking by. “You’re not implicating me in some sort of art heist, are you?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.

Marco snorted. “If I was an art thief, I would not be squatting in a house that is nothing but bones,” he commented. Jean couldn’t really argue with that. “Of course,” he added, with a mischievous edge to his voice, “that would be a good cover, no?”

Jean flushed. “Just… do your thing. Dunno why I’m not stopping you.”

Marco hummed happily beside him, still working open the lock. “Because of the lightning?” he suggested.

The heat in Jean’s cheeks seared to another level. “S-sure,” he replied, ensuring his gaze was well and truly away from Marco. “Because of the lightning.”

There was a small ‘ _click’_ and a soft, “aha” from Marco a few moments later that made Jean’s eyes wander. Marco had the door open, and he was beaming like a cat who’d found a fridge full of cream. “Okay, you’re good,” Jean said, peering into the room beyond. It looked dark. “What is-?”

“I think it is a storage cupboard.”

“Is there a lock inside?”

“I am sure.”

“Excellent.”

Before he could make any more snide comments, Marco slipped inside without a word and beckoned him to follow with the tail end of a grin. Jean stood on the threshold, hesitating. It really was dark in there. Marco’s hand appeared out of the gloom and reached out, waiting. Jean eyed it for a brief second, and then gingerly slipped his hand into it. The remaining grit from the charcoal made the touch coarse and altogether not the soft touch he’d wanted, but the strength behind it was carried with a gentleness that eased his numerous doubts. Marco drew him into the room and stepped backwards as he did so, sinking deeper into the stifling room. “It is alright, ‘Emingway,” he said, a smile in his voice as he guided him. “I know this place well.”

“Break in here with many people, do you?” Jean asked, and hated how strained his voice sounded.

“Only the very special ones,” came Marco’s teasing reply. Suddenly, Jean was very thankful for the dark.

It took Marco a suspiciously shorter time to pick the second lock, and when he opened the door a crack to see the white light of the gallery beyond, Jean breathed a sigh of relief. Standing in this store cupboard felt like the limbo of two worlds; at one end, the world bustled by with little time to stop and look at something unless it was to take a picture of it, and at the other end holding back silence, and history dripping from gold frames. Jean moved to shut the door they’d just passed through, and followed Marco out gingerly into the white light, squinting as his eyes adjusted.

The corridor, luckily, was empty of visitors – a rarity in the Louvre – and when Marco turned back to face him the grin he had plastered onto his face held just that little edge of smugness. “We have your Louvre, ‘Emingway.” He thrust a hand at the waiting corridor. “Where would you like to go?”

Jean thought about it. He remembered coming here with _her,_ when they queued for hours to see the Mona Lisa and how disappointed they were by it. Paintings were paintings, after all, and though Jean could appreciate them it felt insignificant, stuck behind thick planes of glass and the size of a large backpack. “That’s it?” she said, her nose scrunching up in distaste, and Jean had been inclined to agree with her.

“Anywhere but the Mona Lisa,” he mumbled.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing.” He shook the memory loose and turned to Marco. “Where would _you_ like to go?”

He immediately regretted asking; the smile dropped from Marco’s face and morphed into a frown, his hands diving into the pockets of his coat and his shoulders drawing up. “You… would like me to choose?” he asked. It was as though Jean had asked which of his favourite paintings he wanted to destroy.

“Uh, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

Marco didn’t seem to know how to answer that. His brows knit together as he thought, and there was a look to his stare that was equal parts confused and – dare Jean say it – wary. Before he could think too much about it, Marco recovered and strode over to the guide on the nearest wall, humming softly under his breath like he hadn’t just been so utterly thrown by such a simple question. Something came alight in his eyes, and the smile came back. “This way!” he crowed, nearly jumping Jean out of his skin, and he set off at that same lumbering walk of his that had Jean tripping over his feet to keep up.

Marco made an immediate beeline for the Italian Artists section, his stride never breaking as he turned left and right through the small labyrinth of galleries and exhibitions, weaving through the crowds of tourists the same way he did on the streets. Jean found it a little harder to keep up, he had to admit; crowds never seemed to part for him as naturally as they did with Marco. So instead of gliding through, Jean simply shuffled awkwardly, making sure his satchel didn’t accidentally knock out a small child. He snatched glances at more modern artwork as they passed, but didn’t falter. He’d asked Marco to see what he wanted, after all – he didn’t want him to have to wait.

Marco slowed down when they reached a gallery marked ‘Renaissance Italian Artists’, but the light in his eyes seemed to grow brighter and warmer as he stepped into the room. Jean followed him a beat later, having had to pluck himself free from a gaggle of French schoolchildren on a trip. It was a section, he realised, that he’d been around before – it was very close to the room that housed the disappointingly small Mona Lisa – but seeing that light in Marco’s eyes spark and glow as he slowed his step made him smile when he was sure Marco couldn’t see it. It struck him all of a sudden that he missed having someone to go to places with. He missed experiencing something with another person for the first time, and feeding off their enthusiasm and passion. He didn’t get to do it that often anymore. Marco was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he picked out the paintings with light sources, ones that glowed or cast the model in a particular kind of shadow. “It is amazing,” he said, eyes for nothing but the painting before him, “how these lights can change the shape of a face.”

His eyes, however, kept flitting like a moth to a small painting tucked in between two larger ones near the back of the room. It was so small in comparison to the others that Jean couldn’t even pick out exactly what it was from the entrance to the room, but it was very obvious that Marco could. As he took a tour of the room, slow and steady, his kept casting furtive glances at the little painting before drawing his eyes away slowly, as though it pained him to do so. They always came back to it, however, no matter how he praised the others or admired them. It was almost a flirtation, the way he let his gaze retreat and crest over it as he moved around the room. He still looked at the others, still pointed out things to Jean and smiled at them, but he wasn’t really seeing them. _Seeing_ was what he was doing to the little painting. When they finally came to rest before it, Marco’s expression grew soft and thoughtful. “Here,” he murmured, as though worried he would wake the canvases.

Jean looked. And frowned.

As paintings went, he’d seen better. It was pretty unremarkable, all things considered; it was a wonder why it was even on show in the first place. It was a painting of a woman, reclining in bed with the covers curled carefully at her hip to preserve her modesty. Apparently, Renaissance painters never seemed to think breasts consisted of modesty. Her head rested in her cupped hand, her mouth curled upwards in a small half-smile that dimpled her cheek, and her burnt umber hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders. It was an intimate picture, one that made it feel as though the artist was lying next to her in the endless bed, but Jean didn’t understand the way Marco was staring at it. He was staring like it was his whole world, condensed into oils and canvas.

Jean cleared his throat. He didn’t want to say anything to rouse Marco from whatever he’d delved into in his head – but then again, he wanted to ask him why. He settled for, “So, this is your painting?”

That woke Marco up. He glanced down at Jean, and he noticed those burnt sienna eyes of his were swimming in thoughts he could never hope to pinpoint. “My painting?” he echoed.

Jean felt his face get a degree hotter under Marco’s scrutiny. “Uh, yeah. Everyone has a favourite painting, you know? This has got to be yours.”

“Is that so?” Marco was smiling again, and the smile was unequivocally Jean’s to enjoy. “And what is yours?”

Shit. He hadn’t thought about that. Jean wondered on opting for the truth, or the cool response. He opted for cool. “ _Nighthawks_ ,” he replied. “Edward Hopper, you know. The one in the diner.”

Marco raised an eyebrow. “That is interesting, but I do not believe you when you say this is your favourite.”

“Why?”

Marco mulled it over in his head for a moment before he said, “Because it is a very lonely painting. The people all sit, but no one talks. They do not belong anywhere but in that place, at that time. And there is no door. They cannot escape the loneliness, even if they want to.” He leant in closer so that Jean could smell the earthy charcoal on his clothes. “You are lonely like the people in the painting?”

Jean turned to face him. They were close than he expected, and he wondered if they were collecting stares from anyone else in the gallery. He swallowed painfully, ignoring the lump forming in his throat. “I’m not lonely,” he said, but the words choked him. “You don’t… you can’t…”

“You do not want to be lonely,” Marco said matter-of-factly. “That is the difference between you and the nighthawks. I believe that you do not like the feeling of lonely, even if you are often alone. So,” Marco reached up and put a hand on his shoulder, tender and grounding, “I do not believe that you can make loneliness your favourite.”

Jean let the touch linger despite himself, allowed the warmth of Marco’s hand to draw through his clothes and feed the ache in his chest, but then he shrugged him off. “There’s a rumour that Hopper just forgot to put in the door, you know.”

“There is also a rumour that ‘Emingway inspired the painting.”

“Shut up.” Jean huffed. “At least I don’t stare at _Nighthawks_ like I want to fuck it.”

A shadow moved across Marco’s face, but it fled in the wake of his small laugh. “I am sorry. You are confused. This,” he waved at the painting in front of them, “it is special to me.”

Jean raised an eyebrow – that much was obvious – but didn’t ask why. He took a step closer, squinted at the teasingly serene look in the woman’s eye, and asked, “who is she?”

He knew he could have asked it in a more objective, artistic way and not like he’d caught sight of a pretty girl from across the room, but it didn’t seem right. To Marco, she was special, and special was another word for ‘real’ when it came to artwork.

Marco let out a sigh. “She does not exist,” he said.

Jean frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She does not exist,” Marco repeated. “There was no lady like this in the studio. Or in that bed.”

“So… this is done from memory?”

Marco tore his gaze away from the painting for a moment to look at him. “There was someone in that bed, but not a woman.”

Jean stared right back, not comprehending what Marco was trying to tell him – until it clicked. His mouth dropped open. “You mean that’s-?”

Marco sighed again. “Of a kind.”

“A _guy_ modelled for that?!”

Marco sniggered. “Do not look so shocked and scandalised, ‘Emingway. Many artists, they could not afford to pay models for their services. So their family or their… what are they called…” he broke off to think. “The men who were training with them, they would be the models.”

Jean looked back to the painting, looked at the gentle face and the sloping curves. “The apprentices?”

Marco nodded, pleased that Jean knew what he was talking about. “This artist, he is not as well known as your Da Vinci or Michelangelo. But he wanted to paint someone close to him, in a way most people will have seen a woman. But this someone special, he was not a woman.” Marco’s smile faded. “So the artist hides him away, behind the paint, so no one else can see.”

Jean felt his cheeks heating up. “Oh. So, uh, not just an apprentice then?”

Marco sighed. “No.”

Jean moved towards the small information plaque, which was almost the size of the painting itself, and read, ‘ _There is a chance that this was a personal painting, one the artist carried with him during his life. There are critics who believe that the original painting did include the artist’s male lover, but was then doctored after his death to spare the dignity of the family.’_

Jean looked back to the painting. Now he understood. This was so much more than what it appeared; it was hiding something in plain sight, of wanting something so much and so strongly but being unable to do anything about it. This artist, whoever he was, had painted this hundreds of years ago to try to imagine what it would be like to have a life that was considered normal. It was no longer an intimate painting, but a domestic one. And a weight pressed down on Jean’s chest as he realised that it was unlikely this artist would ever have been able to encapsulate his relationship in a medium as bold as oil paint.

“This was the first painting I saw when I came to Paris,” Marco said, subdued. “I thought it was the most beautiful painting I’d ever seen, but it hurts sometimes to look.”

Jean looked back at Marco, at the way his hands itched by his sides to get closer, to touch the canvas and try to scrape away the layers beneath to find something under it that was true. Marco hadn’t talked about himself that often, and especially not who he had been before coming to Paris and bumping into Jean. He remained stubbornly quiet. Jean raised a brow. Marco had said that _Nighthawks_ couldn’t be his favourite painting, because he didn’t want to be lonely. Did that mean that Marco connected with this painting in some way? There was the obvious reason, of course – that Marco was gay, and Jean was fine with that – but that didn’t seem like enough. “What are you hiding?” he muttered, more to himself than to Marco.

But Marco heard him. He turned to face him, only him, the painting at his back. He wasn’t smiling -he was thinking. Marco’s thoughtful face made Jean almost as warm as his smiles. It was just so… _intense._ Like a whole world had opened up to fall right into.

Though he didn’t say anything, Jean wasn’t sure he wanted him to. If he didn’t speak, then he wouldn’t have to know. He wouldn’t have to find out more about this person who had just appeared in his life like a ghost, slipping through the veil and coming to rest by his side. He had already been the reason for black eyes and disgusting coffee, but Jean really didn’t care about that. He realised that knowing Marco might just ruin the mystery surrounding him. But he could see something, a tiny glimmer of truth that flickered behind his eyes and stiffened his shoulders. He almost caught it, almost reached out and took it between his fingers…

But then Marco smiled. And the moment was gone. “Do you not remember?” he said, softly. “I am a famous art thief, wanted in many countries. And _you_ are now my accomplice.”

Jean relaxed. “Hey, don’t get me involved in your schemes.”

“It is too late,” Marco said lightly, folding his arms and shooting him a bright grin. “You did not stop me. You are now involved.”

Jean eyed the people walking past with a degree of concern. “Maybe you shouldn’t joke about this shit in an art gallery.”

“But I do not look like a thief. I am the master of disguise.”

Jean snorted and gave him a playful shove, and that was it. The painting was just a mix of colours on a board, and they were just two people visiting a gallery together.

They wandered around the rest of the Italian section for a little while before Marco suggested a walk along the river to get some fresh air. Leaving the Louvre and stepping out into the gentle nip of a grey season made Jean wince, but Marco scarcely minded. He bounded on ahead like he always did, but this time Jean was determined to keep up with him.

Being next to Marco made Jean feel as though they could be the only two people in the city. The businessmen, the tourists, the families – they all faded away, like they were paintings flooded by water. Marco was a dark blot against an otherwise grey canvas, and Jean… well, he wasn’t sure what _he_ was.

They crossed the road amid a few blaring car horns (Marco, it turned out, did not look both ways before crossing and Jean had the road sense of a lemming) and started to walk along the stretch of wall that kept them from the riverbank and the Seine itself. Jean never paid much attention to the river, but today it was moving sluggishly, pulsing through the heart of the city like a key artery. Parts of the wall were mottled with moss, or eroded away by time or rain. Jean skimmed the top of the wall with his hand as they walked, earning a few strange looks from those passing them by.

“So,” Marco began, after they had walked a little while in silence, “I must apologise to you.”

Jean blinked. “Why?”

“I have been rude. I have not yet asked how your book is coming?” Marco smiled. “The one that will be different.”

Jean winced; had he really said that? “It’s not a book,” he answered, shrugging his hand back into his pocket. “It’s barely even a flyer right about now.”

Marco’s enthusiasm faltered on his face. “That is a shame. Tell me, what do you write about?”

Jean stopped. For some reason, he found it easier to think when he wasn’t moving. Marco stopped too, an eyebrow politely quirking up as he waited. Jean bit his lip as he frowned out the answer. “I think I write about places. And people.” _Method writer,_ he thought. _I am a method writer. I look at life and I write about it, turn it into something different and unusual and beautiful. But you don’t want to know that, and I don’t want to admit to how badly that’s screwed me over in the past. “_ Fat lot of good it does me. Maybe you’re right about me not wanting to be lonely, but no matter how many people I write about…” His voice trailed off. Dangerous territory. Forget it. Move on. “…it doesn’t matter,” he finished, sniffing to cover up the rising embarrassment.

Marco was watching him intently, working something out in the contours of his face. It was the same way he’d looked him over in the coffee shop, precise and gentle in his attention – so much so that it made Jean’s insides squirm a little. When he cleared his throat, his words came out triumphant. “You are lonely because you have lost someone.”

It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be.

It seemed so simple, said aloud that way, but it still hit Jean like a punch in an already bruised place. He sniffed and turned away, his back to Marco as he faced the slow, quiet Seine. “I didn’t lose her,” he decided on. “I know where she is.” Norway, the last time he checked, but that was a long time ago. Back when he cared. Marco didn’t need to know that, though.

He heard a sigh come from behind him, and sensed Marco lean on the wall beside him, looking him over. “Losing someone does not always involve graves and funerals, ‘Emingway.” A pause. “You lost her hand from yours, no?”

Jean slumped lower, so that the grey river was nothing more than a line across the wall. “Yeah,” he replied, giving into Marco’s burning gaze. “Something like that.” It was poignantly clumsy to say, but Jean thought it fit the situation rather well. He swallowed painfully. “I’m over her.”

Both of them seemed to know that wasn’t strictly true.

They lapsed into silence, watching the river rise and fall like the back of a whale. The occasional debris floating on its surface was nothing more than barnacles and baleen, sudden gurgles and bubbles from the river its own attempt at lowing. Jean hadn’t wanted the conversation to veer so close to personal so soon from the gallery. He hated the averted eyes and empty apologies, and he especially didn’t want to hear them from Marco.

The silence was no longer comfortable, but laden with a weight Jean couldn’t find the end of. When Marco spoke again, it was steady and careful, as though he was approaching a frightened animal. “I have lost people also,” he said, not taking his eyes off the river as he spoke. “Many people come and go in this city, this world. I miss them. I am sure you miss her. Whoever she is. And that is not a bad thing.” He shrugged. “It is what makes you human.”

Jean stared at him, lost for any coherent wording. Marco still wasn’t looking at him, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere in the distance. Over the river and across the town, it travelled, skipping between alleyways and street corners and shying away from the rain. Jean wondered if Marco was thinking about somewhere on the other side of the world, another place he’d stepped foot on months or even years ago. His eyes were misted with a memory he wasn’t sharing, and Jean knew better than to ask. He cleared his throat, and saw Marco come back to him. “You know, for someone who isn’t completely fluent in English, you do a pretty good job of nailing how I feel.”

Marco’s mouth quirked up into a smile, and Jean felt warmth spread over him. “I am a man of many talents, Jean.”

It was the first time he had called him Jean in such a casual way. The ‘J’ that so many people bit around was smooth and light on Marco’s tongue, and the rest of the insignificant little letters followed suit. It wasn’t ‘Jeen’ the way most people said it; it was a softer version of ‘John’, the way his mother spoke it, and Jean tried to ignore the slight pinch of homesickness that tugged on his sleeve.

To swat it away, Jean asked, “Could we go back to the café?”

Marco blinked. “The café?”

“Yeah.” By the look on Marco’s face, he knew which one. “I… I’d like to see it again. I know it wasn’t very long ago, but I’m already starting to think I imagined it.”

“What makes you think you didn’t?” Marco’s eyebrow quirked up.

Jean’s mouth went dry. That couldn’t be possible. He knew the brain was an incredible thing, but it wasn’t that incredible. Especially not _his,_ not right now. “But…”

“And if you did,” Marco continued, “is that a bad thing? Or is it that you were… uhm… seeing the world in another way?”

Jean’s resolve hardened. He wasn’t quite sure why Marco was playing games with him, but it helped to chase the doubt out of his mind. “I know what I saw,” he said. “I didn’t just _see_ it either. There was that expensive cigarette smell and the jazz playing. I know _something_ was going on, I just don’t know what.”

Marco had turned away from the river now and was watching him, leaning back on the wall and smiling, and the thought passed Jean’s mind that he wouldn’t have looked out of place in one of those classic black and white photographs. Maybe he could convince him to model for Connie. Strictly in a business sense, obviously.

Marco’s eyebrow quirked higher at the scrutiny, and Jean cleared his throat. “C’mon. You know something’s going on there.”

Marco shrugged. “The café… it is a strange thing, you know. It does not come when it is called.”

“What do you mean?”

Marco took his glasses out of his pocket and slipped them on again, his eyes slightly magnified behind the tortoiseshell frames. “I told you before, ‘Emingway. Sometimes, the people do not want to play.”

There was something about the way he said it, something so subdued and quiet, that made the rest of Jean’s questions wither away. For once, Marco didn’t want to talk about something. Well, that was fine by him – for the moment, anyway. “Fine, fine, so it doesn’t always work. But this – a _window_ , is that what you called it? – are there more of them?”

Marco glanced at him. Jean waited to be asked to drop it, or leave him alone, or maybe Marco would just walk away. But instead, he gave a slow, wary nod.

“Could you show me those?”

Marco thought about it. “I did not think you would see the café the way you did. I did not think… I did not _think…_ ” He scoffed at himself. “Oh, I am an idiot for showing someone like you those places, ‘Emingway.”

Jean bristled. “What do you mean? What kind of person am I?”

Marco fixed him with a thoughtful, almost sad sort of smile. “You are someone who sees with more than just his eyes.”

Jean bit his lip. He couldn’t tell if Marco was intentionally being vague, or if he was actually complimenting him somehow. “Oh.”

The rain began to come down. It fell in a faint drizzle at first, so fine that it was hard to notice, but then the droplets grew larger and the clouds more determined. Jean swore, and immediately held his satchel over his head to stave off the worst of the downpour. Marco just sighed. “Paris… she is always raining, lately.”

“It’s called October,” Jean grumbled.

“Perhaps she is crying for your lost love.”

“Oh, har har.”

Marco chuckled, but it was half-hearted. As they set off back towards the Louvre, he added, “I do not mean to make fun. She must have hurt you very much, to make you sad enough for Paris to cry for you.”

Jean scowled at him, but Marco didn’t seem to care; he just carried on walking beside him, watching with a degree of amusement as his satchel shield failed him and water trickled down his neck. When he was forced to dive out of the way of a small tidal wave puddle sent his way by a speeding taxi, he gave up trying the silent treatment. “Ugh, why didn’t I get stranded in Barcelona or Morocco?” he complained. “Somewhere hot, with beaches and shit?”

Marco snorted. “I do not know, I think you would not have liked the heat either.”

Jean’s rolled eyes just made Marco snort all the more. It was an uncontrolled and ugly sound, but Jean liked it.

When they reached the square in front of the museum, the few droplets had turned into an almighty downpour. Marco steered them both under the shelter of an archway, and Jean couldn’t help craning his neck for a look at where they had left the drawing. His heart sank as the hare, so strong and dark, slowly drained away. The charcoal ran like dark blood down to the nearest drain, and the hare ceased to be a hare. It was now just a nothing, a shadow creature that any child could have sketched, and as Jean watched the artwork trickle away, he felt a strange sense of loss. Marco didn’t move beside him; he was watching the hare disappear too, but there was no turmoil or regret in his face. Jean didn’t understand. How could Marco do this, knowing that his work wouldn’t last? Jean kept his work, kept it safe, carried it around with him at times… but Marco’s work was a mayfly kind of fleeting, something that would only be remembered in the memories of a few forgetful tourists and the flagstones.

An itch in his shoulder suggested that Marco was watching him; when he turned to look, he saw that he was smiling again. “You are not happy,” he said.

“And you’re cheerful, for someone who just watched his afternoon’s work swirl away down a flood drain,” Jean commented.

Marco shrugged. “That is the nature of my work, ‘Emingway. It has its time.”

“But it was beautiful,” Jean said, more to himself than to Marco. “It was…amazing.”

Marco hummed an agreement. “Beautiful things get lost too. But it is okay. It leaves space for even more beautiful things to come afterwards.”

“Huh,” was all Jean could find to say.

They stood under the archway for a little while longer, neither speaking and Jean listening to the steady thrum of rain like an ongoing drumbeat. He thought back to his room at the hostel, with a typewriter ready and waiting, and the spark of an idea stirred in the back of his mind. It was comforting, to feel it there, slowly moving and growing, and as he turned to Marco to say something, he caught him staring.

“I will show you the other places, Jean,” Marco said, his words soft and his eyes softer. “But not because you asked me to.” He took a step closer, invading Jean’s head with that smell of earth and smoke and something close to home. “I will show you because you need to see.”

Jean tried to clear his head, but with Marco so close to him and no one else around it was extremely difficult. He started to wonder where he’d felt this way before, so breathless and immobile that anything he said would come out as total shit. The moment slipped his mind. He came to himself enough to ask, “What do I need to see?”

Marco’s teeth tugged on his bottom lip, his eyes flicking over Jean the same way they always did when he wanted to say something honest. “Something to wake you up.”

And then Marco leaned in and kissed him.

On the cheek.

Jean just stood there, not knowing what to do until Marco pulled away with a bashful smile and a small wink. “We will start tomorrow. I will come for you.” And then he was stepping away, walking out into the rain, letting it soak him to the skin in a matter of seconds but never flinching or complaining. He strode into the rain, into the afternoon, into Paris, and left Jean with nothing but the ghost of a kiss burning onto his cheek and the unsightly smudge of what once had been a hare on the shining paving stones.

And Jean knew he would be waiting impatiently for tomorrow to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHEW LOOKIT THIS AN UPDATE FINALLY
> 
> Sorry it took so long...this was a bit of a bastard to get right, but I'm so happy it's finally out there~ Hopefully the next update won't be as long to wait for!


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